BT is adding Wi-Fi access points to 500 McDonald's
restaurants across the UK.
By the time the rollout is completed at the end of March, BT
will have 2,200 Openzone access sites across the country.
Most of the McDonald's sites chosen are drive-through
restaurants, in addition to its flagship locations in London.
Drive-through customers tend to park nearby to eat their food, and
will be able to access the Openzone service on their laptop or PDA
if they are within 100m of the site.
"We expect it will initially be business people who use it. We
know they meet up at McDonald's when they're on the road," said
McDonald's head of IT Steve Tiley.
Tiley expected other customers to start using the service over
the next 12 to 18 months, perhaps using handheld devices.
The Openzone service costs from £10 a month for 120 minutes of
access on a subscription basis, or 20p per minute on a
pay-as-you-go system, at any Openzone site. These include Costa
coffee shops, Hilton Hospitality hotels, Welcome Break Group
motorway service stations and BAA airports. Users can also buy £6
vouchers at each site, giving one hour's access.
Hotels have the highest Openzone use, said BT spokesman John
Carter, although he did not have details of how long users spend
online in different locations.
Tiley expected each customer to use the service for 20 to 30
minutes. "The typical stay, over all customers, is 15 to 20 minutes
and we think they'll stay longer when they're online. We're
predicting that people will use the service at breakfast, just
before lunch and in the afternoon. That's outside our peak periods
and so it's fine for us if people have a coffee, spread out a bit
and spend a bit of time. It gives them a reason to go to McDonald's
instead of somewhere else."
Starbucks began a rollout of Wi-Fi access in its UK coffee shops
last February, through T-Mobile International, after performing
successful trials in six locations.
The McDonald's rollout will be too late for BT's planned
promotional week, Wireless Broadband Week, which starts on 26
January. During the week, BT will offer free access, with no time
limit, through its access points.
Gillian Law writes for IDG News Service