BT OPENZONE HALVES COST OF WI-FI

Wi-Fi access cost sliced. More places to connect added

BT today cut Wi-Fi rates by up to 50 per cent as it launched a new, simple, great value price structure. More than 2,500 extra European hotspots are also being added, bringing the choice of places to connect to more than 50,000 overseas, and over 100,000 UK and Ireland locations.

Four new tariffs make the popular wireless broadband service great value at as little as ½p per minute, for use at thousands of popular locations. The new products will be available to new and existing customers from today:

• BT Original, provides 500 minutes’ access to BT Openzone, BT FON and BT Business Total Broadband hotspots for just £5 per month.
• BT Openzone Together, a new £12.50 a month option, with unlimited BT Openzone, BT FON and BT Business Total Broadband hotspot access, plus 500 UK roaming minutes, is half the price of its equivalent.
• BT Openzone Global, ideal for frequent travellers, provides unlimited BT Openzone, BT FON, BT Business Total Broadband hotspot minutes, 500 UK and 500 international roaming minutes for £28 a month.
• In addition, the flexible BT Openzone per Minute tariff has been reduced by 25 per cent to 15p per minute. This is ideal for intermittent Wi-Fi use in the UK and abroad. 

Over the agreed allocation, on BT Openzone Original, Global and Together, use is reduced to 10p per minute anywhere. This is great value compared with other roaming technologies where downloading a relatively small 1MB file can cost as much as £10.00 over GSM, GPRS and 3G. Making VoIP calls from Wi-Fi is also significantly cheaper than making or receiving calls over GSM when abroad.

* Fair Use Policy of 3GB per month applies to BT Openzone Together and BT Openzone Global

BT is also announcing a further 2,500 places to connect in high demand locations, through roaming partners Swisscom Hospitality Services and Comfone. These add to the 6,600 UK, Europe and Americas hotspots, announced on 3 October 2008.

Swisscom Hospitality Services, which goes live later this quarter, provides access in 223,000 rooms at more than 2,000 major UK and European hotels including NH Hoteles and Hilton in Continental Europe. Comfone’s WLAN roaming hub, WeRoam, provides 418 hotspots from METEOR Networks in France. BT’s international footprint now includes more than 50,000 places to connect.

Chris Bruce, general manager, BT Openzone, said: “The wireless broadband access market is at an exciting stage. Over the last six months we have seen double the use compared with the same period last year, with huge demand at hotels, major travel hubs, high street locations and residential and business areas. We’ve listened to our customers and not only have we simplified our tariffs but we’ve added more value and places to connect.”

BT customers can choose to get online at over 100,000 UK and Ireland locations, including those provided by the BT FON Wi-Fi Community, BT Openzone and its roaming partners, plus BT Openzone at BT Business Total Broadband hotspots. These include airports, railway stations, leading hotel chains, motorway service stations, coffee shops, marinas, residential areas and extensive coverage across 12 major city centres. For more information on BT Openzone, visit www.btopenzone.com

ENDS

1: BT Openzone has calculated that data can cost up to £10 per megabyte to download abroad. A conservative estimate is that it takes two minutes to download 1MB of data and this is dependent on download speeds of roaming networks.

For further information
Inquiries about this news release should be made to the BT Group Newsroom on its 24-hour number: 020 7356 5369. From outside the UK dial + 44 20 7356 5369. All BT news releases can be accessed at: http://www.btplc.com/News

Notes to editors
BT Openzone customers have access to the entire BT FON network in the UK (BT-managed BT FON hotspots and FON-management BT FON hotspots), included in their inclusive minutes.

BT Business Total Broadband customers can now offer public Wi-Fi access by turning their BT Business Hub into a BT Openzone hotspot, providing secure, publicly accessible high speed wireless broadband.

About BT
BT is one of the world’s leading providers of communications solutions and services operating in 170 countries.  Its principal activities include the provision of networked IT services globally; local, national and international telecommunications services to our customers for use at home, at work and on the move; broadband and internet products and services and converged fixed/mobile products and services.  BT consists principally of four lines of business: BT Global Services, Openreach, BT Retail and BT Wholesale.

In the year ended 31 March 2008, BT Group’s revenue was £20,704 million with profit before taxation and specific items of £2,506 million.

British Telecommunications plc (BT) is a wholly-owned subsidiary of BT Group and encompasses virtually all businesses and assets of the BT Group.  BT Group plc is listed on stock exchanges in London and New York. 

For more information, visit www.bt.com/aboutbt

About Swisscom Hospitality Services
Swisscom operates a broadband Internet access network in its partner hotels across Europe and North America under its hospitality-focused subsidiary Hospitality Services Plus, spanning more than 2.000 active properties and encompassing 223,000 hotel rooms. Additionally, the company supports close to 10, 000 conferences and events annually on a global basis. This makes Swisscom a leading provider of broadband Internet-based services to the hospitality industry: Swisscom services are available in well-known hotel chains such as Hyatt, Hilton, Holiday Inn, Intercontinental, Marriott, and NH. www.swisscom.com/hospitality

About Comfone
Comfone, provider of roaming services to more than 300 operators in over 125 countries, is known throughout the telecoms industry as an international mobile roaming specialist. Through its unique portfolio and additional value added services, Comfone fully optimises the setting up of each operator's roaming processes, thus increasing the efficiency of mobile roaming. The company’s portfolio ranges from the complete outsourcing of roaming, to individual elements, such as signalling, hubbing, data, convergence, clearing and testing services.
WeRoam is the trademark of Comfone’s services in wholesale mobility management and roaming solutions for Wireless IP telecommunications (WLAN and WiMAX). The open roaming platform connects nearly 60 Wireless ISPs and offers an aggregated footprint of more than 35’000 hotspot locations.
All Comfone solutions easily integrate with existing products of Internet, Enterprise, GSM and VoIP service providers. Learn more about Comfone and its WeRoam services at www.comfone.com & www.weroam.com

Contact at comfone:
Comfone AG
Louise Ledsom
Communications Manager
Tel: +41 (0) 31 341 11 74
Fax: +41 (0) 31 341 10 11
Email: Louise.Ledsom@comfone.com

Back to Press news.