Fast-food giant McDonald’s is to become the biggest provider of free wireless internet access in the UK.

The firm will offer customer in all its 1,200 UK branches free WiFi network access to the web by December this year.

McDonald’s hopes the move will attract significantly more customers to its restaurants, said vice president of information services, Ivan Brooks.

The firm’s previous WiFi offering was a paid-for service in 500 UK restaurants supplied for three years by BT Openzone.

“Looking at the number of customers that paid visits brought in, it encouraged us to move to a free model,” said Brooks.

McDonald's will be using network provider The Cloud to supply its free WiFi service, .
The company's decision to offer the free service throughout its 1,200 UK branches follows days after BT’s announcement of plans to offer free WiFi access to its UK broadband customers.

BT has joined forces with peer-to-peer wireless community FON to offer three million customers access to 190,000 hotspots worldwide.