A subscription to Openzone will now cost £25 per month for up to 4,000 minutes of access. Previously, customers were charged £40 for 900 minutes, or £85 for unlimited access.
Openzone is also cutting the cost of 24 hours' access from £15 to £10. It will still cost £6 to get one hour's access, or 20p per minute for pay-as-you-go users.
UK Wi-Fi pricing has been criticised in the past for being too high and too confusing. At £25 per month, Openzone is now comparable with the US market, where standard monthly pricing is around $40.
Chris Clark, BT wireless broadband chief executive, said on Tuesday that price tariffs were being "radically simplified" in response to feedback from customers saying that they like Wi-Fi but weren't clear how they should be paying for it.
"This is the next stage of an evolutionary path for Wi-Fi," Clark told ZDNet UK.
One analyst, though, had a more sceptical view.
"It's more that BT has been doing what it usually does and skimming the top end of the market while it can," said Dean Bubley of Disruptive Analysis.
Bubley believes that the £25 per month tariff is 'about right', but isn't impressed that a single hour's access will still cost as much as £6, and one day's access £10.
"These options are aimed at casual users, but at these prices it looks to me like they're business casual, and great for people on expenses," said Bubley.
"Personally, I think they should be competing with Internet cafés, which at £1 to £2 an hour are more jeans and t-shirt casual."
Clark, though, insisted that BT's tariffs were "extra aggressive".
"Whether the £6 and £10 options are fairly priced is a question that customers must answer, not I," Clark said.
Openzone, though, is still refusing to say how many customers it has. Rumours in the market have suggested that take-up of commercial Wi-Fi services has been poor across the board.
According to Clark, the number of Wi-Fi sessions being handled by Openzone is increasing by an average of 89 percent, quarter on quarter.
Talkback
The same company that is currently advertising what good fellows they are for allowing voice talk for everyone at 5 1/2 pence per hour are charging one hundred times and more for WiFi access?? I don't understand why one is over a hundred times more expensive than the other.
Surely the voice network's running and maintenance costs must be similar to that of a WiFi network. As a consumer, I get pretty tired of companies charging what they like "because they can". What was it that Bill Clinton said of his dalliance with Ms Lewinsky? "I did it for the most morally indefensible of reasons - because I could."
For some reason, I now have an irresistible urge for a cigar....
BT OpenZone forgot to mention that the price had DOUBLED for low-end subscribers.
At the moment I get 120 mins/month for £10 - which is absolutely perfect for what I need. The amount of time suits me, as I only use it to pick up or send emails when I'm out and about - I never web browse or compose emails while I'm connected.
4000 minutes is serious overkill. So I have a choice. I can pay £25 for more time than I want (£15 more than I'm currently paying), or choose PAYG and pay £24 for the same 120 minutes I get now. Either way, the cost to me more than doubles.
Unfortunately BT OpenZone seem to have forgotten that customers do have other choices. I'm cancelling my sub at the end of September (when the old tarriffs cease). I think it's a crying shame.