Photo courtesy of iStockphoto, Catalin Plesa

Having recently announced the end of its roaming deal with The Cloud, the UK's BT Openzone this week announced significant cuts in the price of its Wi-Fi service.

"On Tuesday, the provider introduced a flat rate, under the new Openzone Together plan, of £12.50 per month for unlimited access to Wi-Fi at its Openzone hotspots, up to a 3GB usage cap," writes ZDNet's Peter Judge. "Meanwhile, timed access has been reduced to as little as 0.5 pence per minute, according to BT. A new option, Openzone Original, gives 500 minutes' access for £5, and per-minute access for between 15 and 20 pence."

The Guardian's Charles Arthur is unimpressed. "Well, it's certainly a new price structure," he writes. "Simple, not so much. There are actually four different tariffs, and they vary from a monthly charge of zero (for the per-minute service) to £32.90 (inc VAT) per month. You have to sign up for a minimum of 12 months to the monthly ones. The per-minute, of course, has no contract. The deals still don't strike me as great, and aren't designed for people who might want to use a little from time to time."

As TechRadar's Gareth Beavis notes, some new roaming agreements also expand Openzone's coverage. "The new deal BT has signed with Swisscom Hospitality Services gives access to 2,500 new sites throughout Europe, including NH Hotels and Hilton in Continental Europe, and will come online before 2009," he writes. "It also has a tie-up with Comfone, which will provide access to 418 hotspots in France."

More here from Cellular-News ... more here from ISPreview ... and more here from thinkbroadband.