Is the high street turning into the i-street? That certainly seems to be the impression given by research we published earlier this week, which shows just how many of us are using free, public WiFi hotspots when we’re out and about.

The figures are eye-opening. More than 10 million of us use WiFi in places like bars, cafes, shops and train stations at least once a week – that’s nearly one in four adults. Within that group, an enthusiastic 2.8 million, or 6% of adults, log on at least once a day. That’s around one in 10 smartphone users, or the equivalent of the combined populations of Birmingham, Leeds, Sheffield and Manchester.

One thing that’s also clear is that WiFi usage is no longer the preserve of the young and the metropolitan. This is a service used right across the age range and right across the country. All this translates into some impressive – and growing - usage figures. Our internal data shows there were more than two billion minutes spent online in the first 10 weeks of 2013 alone, with more than 800 million megabytes of information downloaded.

But what’s driving this? Put simply, the explosion of smartphones and tablets over the last five years. Aspirational, easy to use, and allowing us to get online, view pictures, watch movies and listen to music wherever we go, smartphones have fuelled the demand from millions of us to consume content on the move - video in particular.  And with cellular networks often struggling to cope with concentrated demand, people are tuning to public WiFi as a reliable, effective and cheap way to ensure they stay connected.

These trends explain why The Cloud joined the Sky family last year. With Sky’s various award-winning apps having been downloaded more than 40 million times, and with more than 3 million regular users of Sky Go, our mobile TV service, our customers need a high-quality and reliable way to access video content when they are out and about.

That’s why the Cloud’s 16,000 hotspots are in the locations where customers most need them, like transport hubs, pubs and shopping centres.  And with more and more people using public WiFi to stay connected and entertained, we are focused on further growing our network so that customers can continue to enjoy the many benefits of out of home broadband.