McDonald's serves up free UK Wi-Fi

Packet of fries with that?

McDonald's has announced that it will offer free Wi-Fi in its 1,200 UK outlets by the end of the year.

The fast food giant reckons that the roll-out will make it the country's largest public hotspot provider, overtaking Starbucks' pay-as-you-go T-Mobile service which recently announced a deal with Apple to provide free access to iTunes.

McDonald's boasts more than 15,000 Wi-Fi enabled restaurants around the globe, around 8,000 of which are in the US. Not all the services are free, however.

"We hope that this will give greater choice for Wi-Fi hotspot users who have had little choice but to pay by the month or hour to access the internet on the move," said Steve Easterbrook, president and chief executive at McDonald's.

The company also said that there will be no restrictions to customers using the service, regardless of the purchase made.

McDonald's already offers Wi-Fi in some UK restaurants through BT Openzone. It will be retaining its partnership with BT, but has also signed up The Cloud as a hotspot access provider.

BT and FON have also recently teamed up to launch the world's largest Wi-Fi community, offering free Wi-Fi hotspots to Total Broadband customers who sign up for the service and are prepared to share a portion of their own bandwidth.