British Telecom will wholesale access to OpenZone: Wake up and smell the reselling, everyone, with BT reportedly about to offer access to its network on a wholesale basis to other hot spot operators. BT aims for 400 hot spots by autumn, while The Cloud (run by a gaming company with relationships with all kinds of pubs) has 1,000 already.
In case anyone's keeping track, BT OpenZone is using Portal's (www.portal.com) billing engine. So are Boingo, T-mobile, and Connexion by Boeing. Portal Infranet is an expensive telco-class solution. Clearly the providers are expecting revenues worth counting up.
The Cloud seem to have their head screwed on right about this I think. They've taken an existing product, the pub gaming machine, and stuck a WAP inside it. This is the kind of thing which doesn't put off store (or pub, or cafe) owners because they know the product and they're familiar with the company that runs it. Sadly, the decision to use BT's openzone as a pay-and-go element, at £6/hr, places it out of reach of a realistic repeat market and amost suggests it's a gimmick (which is what the pub's will want anyway).