Nokia has today switched on 26 central London Wi-Fi hotspots in a trial that will run until the end of 2011.

The hotspots are located around major London areas, including Westminster, Marylebone, Victoria and the West End and will allow users to access Wi-Fi for free for a two-month period.

There will be no need to register with Nokia or sign into the service; users will be able to connect automatically to “'Free Nokia Wi-Fi,' but will be limited to 1MB/s per user for downloads and 500KB/s for uploads.

"The trial is going to help us understand what people are using it for so we can improve it in the future," said Craig Hepburn, Nokia's director of digital and social media.

The trial, which has been set up jointly with internet provider Spectrum Interactive, is expected to be followed by a much wider roll-out of a free Wi-Fi service that could see 1,000 hotspots set up across the city.

The free Wi-Fi service has launched just as preorders for the new Nokia Lumia 800 Windows Phone, the Finnish company’s first Windows Phone 7.5 handset, have kicked off.