A free smart phone and...?
Yesterday BT launched its latest foray into the mobile Internet industry with BT Total Broadband Anywhere, a package which claims to offer broadband on a ‘free’ smart phone.
The broadband element comes courtesy of the ability to use BT appointed WiFi hotspots. The package also comes inclusive of voice minutes, text messages and a meagre 10MB GPRS data quota.
The basic Broadband Anywhere 50 package costs an eye-watering £24 a month rising to £30 after the third month. If you already have BT's Total Broadband Option 3 then this package can be had for £5 extra per month.
The whole shebang is a 18 month contract meaning you won't be changing your mobile or broadband provider anytime soon.
In order to showcase this service, BT is providing the choice of two HTC handsets, the Blackberry-esque S620 and the candybar with slide out keyboard S710.
While the S620 is free on all tariffs, the more impressive S710 is £30 on the cheaper tariffs. The phones, called BT ToGo units have been modified slightly with a BT branded home screen allowing users to navigate to BT centric options fairly easily.
This latest gambit sounds very similar to the BT Fusion service, which launched in 2005. While that provided simple voice over IP to make phone calls, Total Broadband Anywhere's goal of providing a full broadband capable service, allowing for Web, e-mail and Skype usage may sound tempting.
The only problem is neither handset is actually 3G compliant meaning that if you aren't within range of a WiFi hotspot you'll drop to around 40Kbps, a far cry from broadband speeds.
The whole service is piggybacking on Vodafone's network, however road warriors may find BT's package a hard pill to swallow. With all providers offering competitive data packages, it's hard to see why people would sign up to an 18 month contract for both broadband and mobile phone.
Coupled to the fact that should you not be within a WiFi hotspot GPRS speeds are woeful and the 10MB monthly data quota is as generous as Alan Sugar's compliments.
Given the relatively lacklustre signup to Fusion, BT is embarking on what it is calling “a comprehensive advertising campaign” to push BT Total Broadband Anywhere. BT representatives told us that they are aiming this service at older people who don't already own 3G capable handsets.
They seem to be banking on an untapped niche of OAPs, frustrated by the current complexity of retrieving email and browsing the web on the move. Only time will tell whether such a group exists.
