BT confirms one millionth Wi-Fi hotspot

BT claims the largest Wi-Fi network in the UK and Ireland

BT has announced that it has reached its target of building a network of one million Wi-Fi hotspots.

The telecoms giant claimed that the deployment gives it the largest Wi-Fi network in the UK and Ireland, and said that the hotspots cover a wide range of locations to offer availability in homes, city centres, high-street stores and businesses.

Gavin Patterson, chief executive at BT Retail, said that the firm had tried to keep pace with customers' growing expectations to stay connected wherever they are.

"We have grown from 500,000 to one million hotspots within six months, and will continue to add more to meet the demand from smartphone, laptop, iPod and now e-reader users," he said.

The one million Wi-Fi locations can be broken down into 860,000 public hotspots, 137,000 business hubs, and around 3,800 Openzone installations in airports, hotels and high-street shops.

BT also announced that it expects customer use of its Wi-Fi networks to exceed more than a billion minutes a year, measured from April 2009 to March 2010.

The company said that the peak can be explained in part by the huge growth in UK iPhone traffic as mobile phone providers, including Orange, O2 and Vodafone, signed deals with BT to use Openzone Wi-Fi access in the past eight months.

In a slightly unusual move BT has not specified where the millionth hotspot was activated but will launch a competition on 11 February to find it. More details will be revealed on BT Openzone's Twitter account.