The Brand, the Pitch, the Market

BT has signed an agreement with one of the leading ATM providers, Cashbox, which would transform fee charging ATMs into easily accessible WiFi hotspots. This deal is expected to increase the accessibility of internet facilities across Britain in the next five years.

Presently, Cashbox had around 2,500 ATM machines throughout the UK, which charge customers for each withdrawal. One of the major advantages of these machines as a hotspot is that they are usually present in areas which do not already have significant mobile internet access availability. This would mean that the initiative could bring a lot of benefit to people in these areas.

As an experiment, only 10 Cashbox ATMs will be used to act as WiFi hotspots for BT’s Openzone initially, however the number is expected to grow if the project becomes a success. Tiger Tiger branches in London, Manchester, and Glasgow are the first few spots to be tested.

The CEO of Cashbox, Mr. Ciaran Morton, is optimistic about the project’s success and also feels that their sites are expected to be more popular than many others. As per the agreement, both partners, BT and Cashbox will share income based on the usage of a particular site.

It is reported that along with BT broadband users who have WiFi minutes, Openzone can also be available to Boingo, O2 iPhone, and iPass users.

This entry was posted on Friday, July 3rd, 2009 at 9:32 am and is filed under Online Telecommunication Resources, University Of Technology, Consumer Kicks. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.