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And the Costa Openzone stays high on caffeine

Megabeam may have cut prices; but rival BT Openzone has hit back with a UK version of Starbucks WiFi access - it's done a deal with Costa Coffee.

The UK deal is hardly on the same level as the US Starbucks one; there are over 1,000 US WiFi access points in the coffee chain there, but only five in the City of London announced today. However, it does mean that BT is now able to serve its premium-level customers in the area where the richest of them actually are based.

"BT now has 36 live sites across the UK including hotels, motorway services and shopping centres," said an announcement today. Rivalling Megabeam's Queens Moat, BT can boast "a large number of well-known business names" which have signed agreements to host live sites, including Hilton Hotels, Welcome Break service stations and Bluewater shopping centre.

The total, however, remains modest. "The company is on schedule to hit its target to provide 70 BT Openzones by the end of December, 400 by June next year and 4,000 by June 2005," said the official announcement. "The emphasis is on rolling out the service to carefully targeted prime sites, rather than random ones."

Pierre Danon, chief executive officer of BT Retail, is the man who invented the concept of "data on the pause, as opposed to data on the move." Danon commented: "This is a key element of our vision to connect our customers, wherever they are. In order to achieve our targets for rolling out BT Openzone it is important to develop strong relationships with key high street partners like Costa coffee."

In other words, this should be seen as a flag-bearer deal, heralding further relationships to be announced in future. There was, however, no mention of possible roaming agreements with European partners, a key plank missing from BT's platform at the moment.

Pricing of BT's services can vary according to special deals, and so while the unlimited use monthly fee is £85, subscriptions start at just £20 a month for 300 minutes. And BT is offering a 50 per cent discount on all subscriptions until December 31. A full list of prices is available on the Web site.