Connecting to the web: The handsets are programmed to favour Wi-Fi where possible, and if you happen to live in the centre of one of BT's Wireless Cities – Glasgow, Edinburgh, Newcastle, Leeds, Liverpool, Sheffield, Nottingham, Birmingham, Bristol, Cardiff, Portsmouth and the London Borough of Westminster – you should be able to get online quite easily. Add to that some 82,000 Wi-Fi hotspots nationwide and most town-dwellers should have a fair chance of being able to connect to the web wirelessly somewhere close to home. There's the option to use non-BT hotspots too, but you'll have to pay extra for that.

If you're not in range of a hotspot, you are left with the option of GPRS (General Packet Radio Service) technology to connect to the web. The good news is that there are very few places in the UK where you won't be able to get a signal. The bad news is that GPRS is deathly slow and will probably frustrate you so much that you'll never want to use it. You're limited to 10MB of data per month via GPRS, but it would probably take you all month to achieve that anyway. Wi-Fi is unlimited in terms of data downloads, though subject to a fair-use policy.

VoIP features: Interestingly, BT has inserted a feature that will let you make calls using VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) when you're in range of a Wi-Fi network. VoIP is a big threat to BT's business model where telephony is concerned so it's good to see that rather than try and fight it, BT is embracing the technology where it can.

Prospects: BT has a massive customer base – about 4.2 million broadband customers in the UK, 60 per cent of which are on BT Total Broadband Option 2 or 3. This means that there are plenty of people out there who could be tempted to pay an extra £5 (rising to £10 after three months, mind) per month to get the smartphone as well.

The deals seem to be pretty miserly though. The cheapest package offers 50 minutes of calls and 50 texts per month, which is incredibly low. In defence of this tiny allowance, BT's Warren Buckley explained that many people will sign up and use the handsets as secondary, rather than primary, mobiles.

At the top end, 600 minutes and 700 texts per month is a sensible offer if you're looking to replace your primary mobile phone – but for £53.99, rising to £59.99 after three months? You do get the broadband as well, but it doesn't exactly scream great value.

That said, I expect the lower end packages will be quite popular, and this may make BT think about repositioning the price points, much as O2 did with the iPhone contracts. I'll be watching the progress of the BT Broadband Anytime packages with interest.

Read part one of Ben Camm-Jones' first look at BT Total Broadband Anywhere.

www.bt.com/broadband

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