Seems Nintendo announced a deal today with BT where you can play your Nintendo DS at 270 BT Openzone Hotspots in Ireland. You still have to pay for this Wifi service though, but connecting to the Nintendo network to play other users is free.
What is also interesting is that Nintendo are installing more BT WiFi hotspots in a whole heap of new locations, though it doesn’t say whether these are free or not either. From the press release:
Nintendo will also be installing BT Openzone Wi-Fi hotspots into major video games retailers such as GAME, HMV, GameStop and Smyth’s Toys in addition to other key outlets across Ireland.
I would assume that these are not Nintendo only hotspots so it means Wifi coverage will increase again. The more the merrier.
What BT should be doing, in my opinion, is tying the Hotspots to the broadband customers or business customers who can’t get broadband. So if you have a BT broadband account you can use the hotspots for free and if you are a homeuser then maybe it would cost you can extra fiver or more a month to use these Hotspots. I would think they would make a lot more from their hostpots that way as well as gaining a lot of extra customers. The less bills and logins for people, the better. Course that would mean getting the billing system working properly.