BT openzone drops O2 from July 1st

[Glenn]

From 1 July customers of O2 will no longer have access to BT Openzone wi-fi hotspots around the UK, when a four-year deal between the two firms ends.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-22728977

[Gary]

They very rarely worked anyway, also O2 are shifting all their Phone lines to outsourcing with Capita. Capita may slash nearly 3700 jobs by end of 2015. O2 are shifting to a online Guru/self help question and answer thing which tbh I'm not happy about when it comes to security since O2 have had loads of accounts hacked and phones bought with addresses changed and even numbers ported which would come as a surprise when your phone switches off,  lots of talk about this in the O2 Community forums. As far as WiFi about 4000 hotspots have been lost in reality which considering O2 did not bid in the 2.6Mhz spectrum for 4G but BT did  Unless they pair up with BT this could leave them with capacity issues. You would think they would want WiFi to help take the load..

[Clive]

Am I correct in thinking that BT Openzone only works for BT customers?  I've never managed to log in to any of the unsecured connections that are supposed to be available to me.     It would have been very useful during Friday's outage. 

[zappaDPJ]

As a Tesco customer running on the O2 network this will affect me. Or at least it would have done if I'd have known I had it in the first place. Which I didn't. So I don't think I care at all

[Simon]

So, basically, they seem to be stopping a service that never worked, or people didn't know about, in the first place! 

[Gary]

So, basically, they seem to be stopping a service that never worked, or people didn't know about, in the first place! 

It worked for some and they used it I imagine, Simon.

[Gary]

Am I correct in thinking that BT Openzone only works for BT customers?  I've never managed to log in to any of the unsecured connections that are supposed to be available to me.     It would have been very useful during Friday's outage. 

Depends, if it was a BT Fon you could not, BT openzone you could.

[Steve]

I never managed to log on to BT Openzone without it asking me for money!

[Clive]

Thanks Gary.  When I try to log on it wants a key which I assume relates to a BT Internet account.  Friends of mine with such an account use it frequently.