BT reaches 1.5 million Wi-Fi hotspots

Yesterday evening, BT used a swanky do atop the impressive BT Tower to announce it has reached the landmark of 1.5 million hotspots. Ironically, the event was organised to celebrate the ISP's one millionth hotspot, demonstrating both the rapid growth of its Wi-Fi estate and the time it takes a corporate behemoth to organise a party in its own house.

The growth really has been rapid. It jumped from 500,000 to one million in just six months, adding the next half a million at an even more rapid rate, making BT comfortably the largest Wi-Fi provider in the UK. The vast majority (around 1.3 million) of these are BT FON hotspots, broadcast from BT Home Hubs. The rest are made up of 150,000 business Hubs, 4,000 premium hotspots and 16 'wireless cities' (each around a mile square, with London's Westminster hotspot weighing in at seven square miles).

Speaking at the event, BT wireless broadband director Dave Hughes and BT Openzone CEO Chris Bruce explained the massive growth in Wi-Fi, which currently stands at upward of 1.2 billion minutes of usage. They said the amount of Wi-Fi sessions has grown 230 per cent in just one year, with the amount of sessions from handhelds outweighing those on laptops four to one. That said, it is unclear how many of those 'sessions' are iPhone lightsaber apps upgrading themselves with new 'swooshing' noises of their own accord when no one is looking.

Talking of iThings, Bruce pointed to the iPad as the next big step for Wi-Fi. Apple's unit has launched in the US without 3G support, so its a fair assumption to make. That said, there is no deal in place with Apple as yet, although you can bet some BT suits will be sitting down with some smart-casual Apple execs as we speak, thrashing out the details.

Hughes also took the opportunity to reiterate BT's position on entering the mobile broadband market - a polite thanks, but no thanks. And who can blame it? As the mobile broadband companies fight a losing battle to cope with the data traffic being demanded by an ever growing number of smartphone owners, the buzz word in the market is definitely 'offload'. And what better place to offload all that data than over Wi-Fi? The UK's three iPhone suppliers (O2, Vodafone and Orange) have all been quick to jump on BT's Wi-Fi bandwagon to help ease the load.

As smartphones get smarter, and more data hungry, across the board, BT looks set to cash in. However, Bruce and Hughes are well aware the bubble may burst sooner rather than later. BT is keeping a close eye on the likes of femtocells and of course LTE, while continuing to distance itself from its previous but now seemingly dead interest in WiMAX.

Personally, I'm not sure people are too keen on the idea of public Wi-Fi. I know I'm not, and a recent talk with T-Mobile suggested their research agreed - we like our browsing to be personal, not public. That said, if our personal browsing is being sneakily offloaded publicly, then what's to worry about, eh?