BT announced an agreement with FON, a Madrid-based start-up building a global community of Wi-Fi access point owners (or “foneros”) willing to share their broadband connections.
BT’s more than 3 million consumer Total Broadband customers will be invited to join the global community of people sharing their broadband.
At launch, new members will be part of an existing community of 500,000 members and will have access to more than 190,000 FON hotspots worldwide. Anyone joining in will be able to use those FON hotspots across the world and all the new BT FON hotspots free of charge.
Every person who agrees to share a small portion of their home broadband connection, by opening up a separate, secure channel on their wireless router, will be able to share the connection of any other member. BT Total Broadband customers will also be able to use BT’s premium existing hotspot network BT Openzone, including 12 Wireless Cities.
BT said the FON deal will accelerate and complement BT Openzone in order to provide the largest possible Wi-Fi coverage across the UK and the rest of the world.
http://www.bt.com
- BT has invested in FON as part of the tie-in, joining the company’s other investors, which include Google.
- In May 2007, Boingo Wireless signed a roaming agreement with FON providing Boingo users with access to an additional 130,000 hot spot locations – more than doubling the company’s network size.
- In April 2007, Time Warner Cable agreed to allow and encourage its broadband subscribers to share their home connections as open Wi-Fi hotspots in the FON community. Through a partnership with FON, Time Warner Cable subscribers will be able to create FON access points via their home or business broadband connection.
- La Fonera router is secure out-of-the-box and offers two distinct WiFi channels. One channel is for the exclusive use of its owner; the second channel is shared with other foneros. The La Fonera increases security through an encrypted private network and Foneros decide how much bandwidth to share. Public users cannot access the private network and there is no anonymous usage.
