British Telecom is to re-enter the wireless market, less than six months after spinning off its mobile phone business.
BT Group is pursuing a two-pronged strategy: re-establishing its brand in the mobile phone market, and setting up a public wireless broadband network.

We intend to build a national network of access points around key public sites such as hotels, railway stations, airports, bars and coffee shops - all within reach of business travellers and commuters

BT plans to target its wireless broadband access at corporate customers first. Consumers will be able to access the service in 2005 at the earliest.

And the launch of the network will not start before June, once the UK Radiocommunications Agency has allowed commercial services to operate across the 2.4GHz spectrum.

Wireless broadband access depends on the installation of so-called "hotspots".

Within 100 metres of such wireless hotspots, people with a mobile device, the right network card and the right software, will be able to use their devices to access data.

BT plans to install about 400 hotspots by June next year, in places like coffee shops, hotels, railway stations, airports and bars.

By June 2005, BT hopes to have 4,000 hotspots in place.

The wireless LAN - which stands for Local Area Network - will be developed in conjunction with Cisco Systems and Motorola.

BT is currently talking to Costa Coffee about setting up wireless LAN in its chain of coffee shops, and says it is in "advanced talks with all the leading retailers and property owners to create the right geography and number of outlets".

Once the service is opened up to consumers, BT plans to offer access through subscription or pay-as-you-go.

BT will also move back into the conventional mobile telephony again, but without building its own mobile phone network.

The company says it will be a mobile service provider, buying airtime from its former Cellnet subsidiary, now called MMO2.

The service will be aimed at business users as well, and BT hopes to attract customers by offering integrated telecoms services.

BT is emulating a similar strategy to that of Virgin Mobile, which operates a virtual network using the services of One2One - the operator which is currently being rebranded as T-Mobile.

But BT insists that it has no plans to become a fully-fledged virtual network itself, which could be seen as an attempt not to tread on the toes of its MMO2 spin-off.

BT hopes that in five years time the new mobile strategy will earn it an extra £500m ($716m) annually.