I've recently been working from France and have often had to rely on wifi hotspots operated by Orange. I consider the charges made by this firm to be very reasonable and one that encourages casual wifi use.

I was being offered 10 hours of broadband access for 15 euros directly from the hotspot's web site. 15 euros is around £10 sterling, which works out to be around £1 per hour. Furthermore, the 10 hours was available for 30 days at any hotspot from first login, which provides additional and valuable flexibility.

Orange also offers shorter periods of access down to 1 hour for 4.50 euros (approximately £3 per hour).

Naturally, I consider the Orange Wifi offering to be excellent and it certainly encouraged me to remain connected for longer.

I've just compared this with BT OpenZone, which is no where near as flexible. I have generally been looking for enough connection time to economically read and reply to my emails; browse for current news and to check a few other sites. I've also wanted the ability to be able to extend this extensively if the need arises, especially where I might need to connect to a client's site for several hours. However, since I wouldn't necessarily know that I would need to do this in advance, I have not been inclined to waste money on connection time I probably won't eventually need.

BT OpenZone offers a £6 per hour voucher scheme, which is vastly more expensive than the equivalent Orange offering and must be used within 24 hours. I believe this entry tariff severely puts people like me off, especially since the next rate reduction only comes after over 30 hours of connectivity. BT OpenZone does offer a £27 for 2,000 minutes (roughly 81p per hour), but this means a heavy upfront investment, which might not be needed, and furthermore must all be used within five days, or forfeited. Orange has a slightly more expensive (but more flexible) plan similar to this at 30 hours for 50 euros (say around 90p per hour) to be used within 90 days.

BT OpenZone's only other voucher-based access is £40 for 4,000 minutes within 30 days (ie: 60p per hour), which is a better deal than any of the Orange offerings based on cost per minute considerations, but you definitely need to know that you are going to be online for that amount of time, which for a short trip I am not always in a position to guess in advance.

The huge benefit (as far as I am concerned) of the Orange tariff is that I can consume broadband access at around £3 per hour with little upfront commitment and can quickly bring this down to £1 per hour if I am likely to require 10 hours connectivity, which over a couple of days is not unreasonable. If I subsequently need more time and if I am prepared to commit to longer periods, I can reduce the hourly rate with proportionate time limits to the amount being invested. The BT OpenZone scheme, in contrast, dissuades me from using its service at all initially; and only really becomes attractive if I know I am going to need long periods of at least 30 hours of Internet access and is very unforgiving if I get that wrong because of the very short time limits offered with their vouchers.

I think that wifi hotspot use would soar if BT OpenZone (and their UK competitors) were to offer similar tariffs to those of Orange in France.