Living in a wi-fi world

Hot spots are ‘cool’ right now. Without a doubt wi-fi has captured the public’s imagination like no other recent networking technology.

For BT, broadband driven wi-fi represents a key strand of its mobility and convergence plans in a market which brings easier access, fast downloads and a growing range of new or enhanced feature rich services.

BT currently has 1.5 million open wi-fi hotspots in an estate comprising the BT FON wi-fi community, BT Openzone plus BT Openzone hotspots via the BT business hub. It is the largest network in the UK and Ireland with hotspots available in homes, independent businesses, high street chains and major city centres.

Open wi-fi was launched in 2007 with the BT FON project, and allows customers connected to BT Total Broadband to share their broadband connection, via wi-fi, through a unique and secure means of traffic separation.

It works by using IPSec (internet protocol security) tunnels over a single broadband connection to separate the traffic from the home user and the visitors, which then terminates at different places in the network. Traffic prioritisation assures ongoing quality of service for the home users.

Seamless experience

The idea of sharing a wi-fi connection goes back to 2005 when Pete Smyth from BT Innovate & Design, and a BT team were talking about the whole issue of shared broadband access at home.

Pete says: “Members of the team were looking at ways to grow the trend for wireless broadband access to be shared with visitors to your home. Rather than needing to tackle problems such as sharing security keys, we thought it would be great if it was a seamless experience.”

The team then went on to organise focus groups with potential customers and their ideas took on a new approach to innovation.

Pete explained: “With open wi-fi we turned the innovation process on its head. Rather than focusing first on technology and what we might use it for, we approached it from a customer perspective.

“So, researching the service concept and testing the market came before directing our attention to the technology issues that would need to be resolved.”

Those technology challenges involved finding ways to refine the architecture to allow it to integrate with BT’s network and IT systems. The answer was provided by a team led by BT Innovate & Design, with support from the BT Group innovation and research teams, who developed the traffic separation idea.

It means that visitor and home user data is passed through separate channels with either user knowing the others activities. Traffic prioritisation for the host user also ensures they have consistent quality of service.

With London’s mayor Boris Johnson declaring that he wants London to be fully wi-fi enabled for the 2012 Olympics, demand for the technology is likely to grow significantly in the medium term, regardless of what 4G LTE and WiMAX possibilities are on the more distant horizon.

* 4G LTE is the fourth generation of cellular wireless standards.

* WiMAX is the next-generation of wireless technology designed to enable widespread, high-speed mobile internet access to a wide array of devices.