BT Wi-fi Hits 5 Million Hotspots

DC13-158 14 May, 2013

BT Wi-fi Hits 5 Million Hotspots

Adds 20,000 hotspots a week, 400 million connections and 13 petabytes of data over past year

BT Wi-fi has announced that it's reached more than 5 million hotspots in the UK and Ireland, with the company adding more than 20,000 new hotspots each week over the past year.

BT saw more than 400 million connections across its wi-fi network in 2012/13* and latest figures show users' online wi-fi time is increasing, with minutes more than tripling in the same period.

An incredible 13 petabytes of data (13 billion megabytes) were consumed across BT's Wi-fi network during 2012/13*. The volume is the equivalent of downloading 3.9 billion MP3s (iTunes currently has 26m songs in its library), or non-stop streaming of The Hobbit in HD for 1,042 years 1. If you were to take smartphone photos placed side by side, this amount of data would be over 624,000 miles long or long enough to wrap around the equator twice.**

Research conducted by BT and ICM*** has found that usage trends for wi-fi vary according to age. Most 18-24s favour wi-fi for social media, whilst the 35-44 age group chooses to shop online. Most 45-54s use it for GPS and mapping services, whilst the over 65s use wi-fi for finding discount vouchers or codes.

Andy Baker, BT Wi-fi CEO, said: The time wi-fi users spend online and the amount of data they're using is up across our network. People are now so confident and comfortable with their gadgets, we've had to meet the demand with more hotspots in a wider choice of places on the high street and in thousands of neighbourhoods across the country.

There are now more than 764,000 places where people can connect via BT Wi-fi in the South East, 464,000 in Scotland, 519,000 in the East, around 501,000 in the South West, and more than 543,000 in London. BT has also made it even easier for people to find a wi-fi hotspot when out and about in the capital by teaming up with Recce, the immersive 3D city map to include BT Wi-fi hotspots in the latest Recce London app. BT's own Wi-fi apps are also proving popular with almost 2 million downloads by BT Broadband customers and are available in the relevant app stores for Windows, iOS, Android and Blackberry users.

All BT Wi-fi hotspots are free and unlimited for BT Broadband customers although anyone can logon. It's available at brands like Starbucks, GAME, John Lewis, Network Rail and Hilton plus millions of homes and thousands of independent businesses.

For more information visit www.btwifi.com

-End-

Notes to editors:

1 Based on an average MP3 size of 3.5MB

http://www.apple.com/uk/pr/library/2013/02/06iTunes-Store-Sets-New-Record-with-25-Billion-Songs-Sold.html

Based on an average HD film streaming at 1.5 GB per hour The Hobbit is 169 minutes long.

* Period between April 2012 and March 2013

** Average smartphone camera photo is 3MB in size and the average printed photo is 8.5 inches wide.

*** BT ICM Research March 2013, sample of 2,000 people

LINK:	http://www.btplc.com/News/Articles/Showarticle.cfm?ArticleID=12493E22-...
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