New hotspots and lower prices with BT Openzone

An announcement made by BT Openzone that thousands of new hotspots will be added to its existing network and that it will also be dropping the rates for accessing its expanded Wi-Fi network.

The new OpenZone Together plan was released on Tuesday offering unlimited access to Wi-Fi at a flat rate of £12.50 per month, with its download usage cap set at 3GB. Also according to BT the cost for timed access to its Wi-Fi has also dropped to as little as 0.5 pence per minute. Openzone Original is also a new addition costing user £5 for 500 minutes access and between 15 – 20 pence per-minute access.

There will be an 18 month contract signup for users looking to take advantage of the Openzone Together plan. The typical costs of £15 per month for capped mobile broadband deals of a similar type with other 3G operators like Vodafone and 3 mean that the Openzone plan is a little bit cheaper although there is occasionally a 5GB cap in place with some providers. The typical length for most mobile contracts is currently 18 months.

There are now roughly 6000 new hotspots in the Openzone network, of these 2500 are located throughout Europe after operators including Vex, iBahn and Wayport agreed to new roaming deals. However, after cancelling The Cloud’s roaming deal back in September the Wi-Fi coverage for BT has now dropped by about 3000 across the UK.

The reduction in BT’s prices for Wi-Fi runs parallel with the beginning of a marketing campaign by operators costing around a billion dollars to promote laptops with built-in mobile broadband and a huge growth in data usage over 3G networks. According to Rupert Wood from Analysys Mason it is estimated that in the next five years more than 25 percent of fixed broadband user will move over to a cellular network-based mobile broadband as their primary means of access. In a recent statement Woods said “Nearly a quarter of broadband-equipped sites will be mobile-only by 2013.”

Rob Ablewhite, director of Broadband Expert, a consumer site comparing broadband products said “Any other technology is going to struggle against mobile broadband. It has the upper hand now, and a year down the line, I can’t imagine anyone using anything else.” He also said that in the last 12 months the average mobile broadband price has dropped by over 50 percent, this alone has been a contributing factor in the huge increase in users taking up this service, adding that coverage for Mobile broadband was far better than that of Wi-Fi.