BT getting in on the FON
Nick Clarke | October 6, 2007It’s odd when something is going on all around you and you have no idea about it!
Yesterday I heard about the BT partnership with the FON network and there is me thinking what the hell is FON?
After going on their website to find out some more information I checked the coverage map only to find that there are hotspots all over the place and some quite close to where I live.
What is FON?
“FON is a company that has been helping its members share Wi-Fi bandwidth for over a year. It has over 200,000 members.” -BT FAQs
FON basically creates free Wi-Fi connections all over the world. This is odd at first, as in the UK at least it is illegal for someone to use another persons internet connection without their permission, especially when you have no control over what they are downloading. From reading BT’s FAQs it sounds like they have covered this by using the username/email and password that is assigned to your BT account. This means that anyone using your internet for illegal reasons will be caught and not you.
After some research it sounds like a great idea meaning that all BT Total broadband customers can now use the internet while on the move for free. This of course depends on being close to a FON hotspot, but as BT customers opt in to the scheme the coverage will get better and at 512kbps this is not slow at all while on the move. Compare that to the mobile 3G system of only 384Kbps, which is when it is running at its best from experience.
So if you want to share your connection all you need to get started is the FON access point.
[...] This is especially true when you consider that at
Mobile Firefox in the planning | Nicholas Clarke | October 10, 2007[...] This is especially true when you consider that at the moment there is a big rise in the mobile hardware that is being offered in shops and with the big players in the market planning on offering free Wi-Fi to the masses (last week Mc Donnald’s and BT). [...]