BT

BT: No More Cloud Sharing

Posted by Sam Churchill on October 1st, 2008

British Telecom’s Openzone, which has had a 5 year Wi-Fi roaming deal with The Cloud will end it’s relationship on Thursday, after the two communications firms failed to resolve unspecified issues over commercial terms, reports ZD Net.

Customers of each network will no longer have access to the other network’s hotspots starting 2 October. It will drastically cut the number of hotspots BT Openzone customers can use, particularly in business-centric areas. The Cloud has 6,500 live Wi-Fi hotspots in retail venues, hotels, airports and sports and music venues, while BT has only 3,000 Openzone hotspots.

BT is claiming that this shortfall will be mitigated by the roughly 140,000 users who opened up their routers into effective hotspots following BT’s deal with the Wi-Fi-sharing community Fon.

These are, however, mostly residential users. BT has introduced a similar concept for its 170,000 business customers, but there are as yet no figures for how many have volunteered to open up their routers to the public.

BT’s Wireless Cities program, which covers 12 UK city centers (below), could also make up for some of the coverage lost. There will also be many sites where BT Openzone and The Cloud coverage is currently duplicated.

The Cloud is now trying to tempt BT Openzone customers to switch by offering them 30 days’ free subscription if they sign up to The Cloud. Other operators that continue to have roaming agreements with The Cloud include O2, Orange, AT&T Hotspots and iPass.

The always cogent Caroline Gabriel says the UK’s upcoming auction of 2.6GHz mobile broadband spectrum is intensely anticipated, partly because it is the first major European market to make the move. But also because it represents the best chance for a WiMAX operator to gain a national license in a leading EU economy.

Ofcom will auction 2010-2025 MHz and 2500-2690 MHz bands on a technology and service neutral basis. In total, 205 MHz will be available.

British regulatory body Office of Communications (Ofcom) will open up this spectrum next year. It was originally scheduled for this summer, but was delayed. Current WiMAX operations in the UK use the less ideal (and less mobile) 3.5GHz band.

It will be the UK’s single-largest release of radio spectrum to date, suitable for a range of new services such as mobile broadband and advanced wireless services delivered using WiMAX and 3G technology.

The incumbent telco, British Telecom, has no mobile arm, which makes it likely to bid for a license. If it does and it wins, BT is likely to adopt WiMAX rather than LTE to take advantage of the headstart WiMAX would provide, say some observers.

WiMax hopefuls in the U.K. may find themselves shut out of the 2.6 GHz auction by the Office of Communications, says Unstrung. Five mobile operators are potentially bidding to hoard WiMax spectrum (at 2.6 GHz).

Ofcom has allocated a certain amount of licensed spectrum for time division duplex (TDD), or unpaired spectrum, and a certain amount FDD, or paired spectrum. Analysts and WiMax players expect the U.K.’s mobile operators to buy up the TDD spectrum to keep out new Mobile WiMax competitors.

source : dailywireless.org