BT Wi-Fi Starts Promoting Future UK Rebrand to EE WiFi
Customers of BT’s national UK network of free and premium public WiFi hotspots, which are currently branded as BT Wi-Fi, have noted that the operator recently started to inform users that the service is shortly going to be rebranded under the EE WiFi name.
The move is part of BT’s wider branding shake-up, which was first announced in April 2022 (here) and will eventually see EE become the “flagship brand for our consumer customers” (i.e. converged broadband and mobile plans etc.) and BT become the flagship for their Enterprise and Global units (here). Inevitably, that was also going to impact BT Wi-Fi, but until now we hadn’t seen that being publicly confirmed.
The recently added customer notice simply reads: “BT WI-FI IS BECOMING EE WIFI. We’ll be getting a new look and network name shortly. Your existing username and password will remain valid going forward. When you see the “EE WiFi” network you can connect to this in the same way you currently use “BTWi-fi”.”
Customers of the service, at least those who aren’t existing BT broadband and mobile users, typically pay from £4.99 for 1 hour of access, £7.99 for 1 day, £19.99 for 5 days and £39 for 30 days. At that price, it’s easy to see why most people prefer mobile broadband data and now often only consider public WiFi as a last resort. The operator did previously offer a 12-month unlimited option for £15 a month, but it seems to have vanished.
At present no date has been given for when this branding change will be implemented. Credits to Umayr for spotting.
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook and Linkedin.
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With Lyca being as low as £2.75 for 15GB data, it’s real easy to see why people don’t really use these wifi networks
15gb of data I use that within less than half and hour 0.30hrs on my xbox series x digital downloads via ee data unlimited sim.
I would imagine most users are BT broadband customers who get it for free anyway. I’ve used it a few times in hotels and even in Tesco, which has BT WiFi but is a bit of a faraday cage for mobile. It’s a good freebie, though I’m not sure I’d pay the hourly or daily rate
Dealing with Lyca mobile could lead to a nervous breakdown
I cancelled my new SIM as I couldn`t register it, but for the past 3 months they have been debiting my Bank Account for the monthly payments. Endless emails got nowwhere
Eventually Bank put a block on their antics
So glad I left EE last month. The service was pretty good but I was messed around with regarding discount on a contract renewal, had enough and left.
They kept harassing me saying I would be unhappy with a different provider and come back. Not so! Happy and paying a lot less.
Yeah, EE have become incredibly arrogant in recent years and not showing any sign of changing!
As a BT customer, the EE wording has been creeping into various things for a few weeks now, the latest being when talking to a BT CS rep and they text you a pin to discuss your account. It comes from EE and says “Hi from EE”.
A couple of months ago all BT customer service staff were transferred over to EE. Unfortunately the perception that BT is an old brand with poor customer service persists.
I will be curious to see if Plusnet goes the same way.
personally I would trust BT brand more then EE brand not sure why they don’t rebrand other way around. British Telekom vs Evertying Everywhere ….
Because EE purchased BT with the intention of swallowing it up. I’ve been reporting this for about a year now this was all decided in June 2021.
What are you on about I love Starlink? BT bought EE back in 2016. EE didn’t do anything
EE-Auto has been around a while, wonder if we will now have to pay or it will be free with more hotspots?
Bemusing to me that they’d go with EE when BT seems to be a much stronger brand overall. Like Vodafone re-branding to Three, it just doesn’t make sense.
This is what they are doing, BT is for business
And you can understand wanting to distance the 2 as they are worlds apart.
This way reviews/Comments about BT will refer to their business products, and EE to consumer – no mix ups
Vodafone aren’t rebranding to Three?!
I wonder if we’re moving into the era of bundles? You get your mobile & broadband plan as a combined plan
We’ve been in that sad, sad era for a long time already – which is why every year, prices go further and further up and people just keep paying up for it because they’re all too locked in and don’t realise they can get much better value than they’re getting. Sad world 🙁
Totally! this is why BT and PN Mobiles have been canned. It’s going to be EE TV/Mobile/Internet/VoIP
Nearly all of these public Wi-Fi providers end up being extremely tedious very quickly as they usually do not remember you across hotspots and insist on using HTTP-based captive login portals.
For a while BT Wi-Fi had a “BTWiFi-X” SSID that you could use 802.1X certificate auth with in combination with a mobile config profile from their iOS app, which not only got you WPA encryption over the air but also handled automatic login for you. Then they decided it was too complicated and decided to discontinue it, so it’s now disappearing from BT hubs countrywide.
Vodafone also used EAP-SIM for a while on some hotspots to try and solve the same problem, only they seem to have largely disappeared too. I think “EE-Auto” is similar.
It doesn’t matter how they brand or what they do, if the hotspots insist that I have to log in through a captive portal every time, I’m probably just not going to use them, and I suspect most people probably feel the same way.
Where is it reported that EAP is disappearing from Smart Hubs?
> Where is it reported that EAP is disappearing from Smart Hubs?
The BT Wi-Fi support team confirmed this to me some time ago via email. You’ll also notice that the BT Wi-Fi iOS app no longer has the “Install connection profile” option which was used to configure EAP on the device, so once the certificates in the provisioning profile expire, it wouldn’t be usable anyway.
Seeing as the majority of BT public wifi hotspots are customer routers (BT smart Hubs) it will be interesting to see if they get rebranded as EE presumably as part of a future firmware update.
You mean like the admin portal and webpages served from the hub?
Still think it is a big error on BTs part to rebrand their domestic services under the (weaker imo) EE one.
BT were hands down the worst experience I have ever had! It was so bad that I wondered if it was some kind of sick social experiment to see how much crap a person is willing to endure. I ran for the hills at the first opportunity.