Now there’s a surprise. BT has joined forces with FON. I first heard about FON and met the founder at the e-Tel conference couple of years ago. Basically, it’s a system to allow people to share some of their wifi bandwidth with passers-by who also subscribe to the FON system. I liked the idea – I’d written a proposal for something very similar when I was at AT&T – but I didn’t think FON’s model would work because it would violate the usage contracts of most ISPs, who don’t like you sharing your broadband with others.
Of course, if the ISP is in on the action, then that’s a different story! Congrats to Martin Varsavsky for this, and to BT for not behaving like an old-fashioned telco. It will be very interesting to see how popular this proves to be…
More info at BTFON.com…
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What an excellent idea! Will transfer my broadband to BT now. Especially since you can hook into BT Openzone for free it seems.