New Flat-fee Wi-Fi tariff

The Cloud, Europe’s leading WiFi network operator,today announced a radical new low pricing structure which will make unlimited broadband WiFi access available for just £11.99 across its 7,000 UK indoor hotspots and outdoor hotzones. The Cloud will be launching this ground-breaking tariff in conjunction with a number of major partners, plus the offer will be directly available from The Cloud hotspots and website.

The new unlimited flat rate package, called UltraWiFi, will be available from 1st July 2006 at a price of £11.99 a month with a 12 month subscription, and £11.99 a week on a pay-as-you-go basis.This sets a completely new pricing model for WiFi access.

UltraWiFi is the latest piece of a vision The Cloud has been building towards over the last year that sees WiFi providing “always on" away-from-home connectivity and mobility for a huge range of new devices and applications.

Specifically, The Cloud has put in place an open network architecture across its entire site estate, that allows it to support multiple service providers with seamless experiences. This has enabled Nintendo to offer instantly connected wireless Internet gaming to users with handheld DS consoles in Cloud locations; Vonage to offer a seamless voice over Internet user experience via a cordless handset; and Skype to offer its instant messaging and calling applications that work exactly the same in hotspots as they do at home or in the office.

To meet the growing demand for wireless applications and services, The Cloud has also been broadening its network footprint to meet the needs of both business users and general consumers by adding new indoor hotspots and outdoor hotzone locations.

Now by changing the way WiFi access is priced, The Cloud believes it is making it possible for even more applications and services to use WiFi connectivity, as well as making Internet access on the move affordable to everyone.

This latest innovation from The Cloud will be introduced at the same time as The Cloud switches on its new city centre hotzones in Birmingham, Cambridge, Edinburgh, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, Nottingham and Oxford, along with the London boroughs of Kensington and Chelsea, Camden and Islington.

In addition to the new hotzones coverage, people will be able to log on and use unlimited WiFi at Cloud hotspots located at BAA airports, regional airports, First Great Western train stations, Coffee Republic outlets, Little Chef cafés, Swallow Hotels and over 4,000 pubs and regional hotels across the country, as well as the business district of Canary Wharf.

The Cloud is also building the new WiFi network for the City of London, to be launched in late summer 2006. “City workers will directly benefit from new low cost WiFi access as they can use WiFi everyday to work away from the office and even make VoIP calls when out on the street," says Polk. “But the people we think will benefit most from this new low cost model are the hundreds of thousands of mobile workers, who need Internet on the move, but have been held back by the cost of 3G connectivity and ad hoc WiFi pricing.There is still a lot of work to do to make the vision of true WiFi mobility for all applications real, but that is what we will be doing over the next year." www.thecloud.net