News

BT goes for public WiFi, launching "when it's legal."

Not waiting for the lights to change, BT is hoping to jump-start public WLAN access in the UK by launching "Agile Business Balanced Life" with the aim of earning £180 million a year by 2004 from "public hot spots."

This report comes live from BT HQ in Newgate Street, St Pauls, over a Cisco switch and access point set up as one of BT's first public access points. It's free today, for demo purposes, but charging and subscriptions will be announced.

It looks like charges will be around 50 pounds a month, or ten pounds per day, for "all the data you can eat" services.

Pierre Danon, ceo of BT Retail, announced a service for "workers on the pause" - compared with those on the move, or working from home - which already has 400 WiFi sites ready to go, around the UK, with subscriptions in partnership with mmO2.

It won't be restricted to the 802.11b standard. It will have Bluetooth too (provided by Red-M) and both the new IEEE 50 megabit standards will be supported - 11g and 11a as soon as feasible.

The new mobility strategy is expected to contribute new revenues of 180 m per year by 1004-5 and could rise to 500m in five years.

"We believe very strongly in broadband on the pause," said Danon. "It's limited in usage, not available when you are walking, and limited to the laptop. But it is three times faster and half cheaper than 3G, and it's available now - or as soon as we get approval from the radio agency. We will deploy that quite aggressively across the UK, as fast as we can."

David Hughes, director of BT Mobility, said BT would focus primarily on the business user, and expected email to be the number one application. And he said he was expecting the business to be profitable "within two years" because of high demand from users.

"We are being driven by customers, who are asking for convergence, across voice and data, across fixed and mobile," Hughes said. "They don't want to deal with dozens of different suppliers. Customers want access to the most powerful network at the moment. When you're at home, you don't want GPRS; you want your high speed broadband. It's about using wireless adaptively."

BT will become "a mobile service provider," he said.

Equipment is supplied by Motorola and Cisco.