BT plans wi-fi service for Ireland

BT Ireland is looking at launching a community wi-fi service in the Republic after launching a comparable offering in the UK yesterday.

BT Group has teamed up with global wi-fi community Fon in a deal to allow more than three million UK broadband customers to use hundreds of thousands of wireless hotspots for free.

A spokeswoman for BT Ireland said the company is "looking at opportunities to launch this into the Republic of Ireland". The service launched yesterday will be available in the North.

BT's retail customers who agree to share a small portion of their home broadband connections by opening up a separate, secure channel on their wireless router with a click of the mouse, will join a global community of people already surfing over "a people's network" of high-speed internet connections, BT said.

A spokesman for Fon said it "would be very interested in doing something similar in Ireland and have been in discussion with Irish broadband providers".

The announcement comes in the week where it emerged that a security flaw in 250,000 Eircom broadband routers makes it extremely easy for hackers to piggy-back on customers' wi-fi networks.

Stepping up competition for customers in the UK's broadband market, BT said it had taken a stake in Fon - joining investors including internet search engine Google and online auction leader eBay - to create "the world's largest wi-fi community".

With what has become a company motto, "You pay at home and roam the world for free", Argentine entrepreneur Martin Varsavsky, who founded Spanish-based Fon in February 2006, said Fon was already the largest wi-fi network in Japan and Germany.

Varsavsky, who has signed up Russian conglomerate AFK Sistema and France's second largest fixed-line telecoms operator Neuf Cegetel, said his target of hitting one million customers by the end of 2008 was "very reasonable".

"For people who like music, movies, videos, games ... wi-fi is becoming huge - and because the gadget makers love wi-fi."

At launch, new BT members will be part of a community of 500,000 members and will have access to more than 190,000 Fon hotspots worldwide. BT said its Total Broadband retail customers would be able to use its existing 7,000 wi-fi hotspot network and its 12 "Wireless cities", which include Birmingham and Newcastle.