Fon - The WiFi revolution is here

[Phil]

What a great and simple idea FON (http://en.fon.com/) is: give part of your wireless router bandwidth to Fon user access and get a Fon account that lets you access other Fon users' hotspots. If enough people do it, then you've got free wifi access all over the place. This is called the "Linus" model. If you want to make money out of it then you can become a "Bill" and charge for your bandwidth.
Early days still - and i can't see BT being to chuffed about it - but I reckon this one's got legs.

[francis]

Do you think it'll work? I'm noticing more and more WiFi hotspots these days - Costa and Starbucks and even a few pubs in Tunbridge Wells and, if the San Francisco WiFi experiment (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4351400.stm) takes off (which will probably take a few years), then its days are numbered.

[James]

Yes I think it will work, maybe not with this incarnation, but in five years' time I predict that wireless internet access will be ubiquitous in all towns and cities, maybe even free of charge.

It will be like running water, roads and telephone networks - a necessary part of any civilised infrastructure.

[Phil]

I'm sure that eventually there will be city wide WiFi in London supplied like, as James says, water, electricity, street lighting. But I think thats quite a few years off. In the meantime I think Fon - or some similar "open source" wifi - is a brilliant idea. The BT openzone thing is pretty expensive.

Mind you the Fon experiment does need to develop a bit more first. At the moment it only works for Linksys routers - which i don't have so i can't participate. Also, it's not clear how many other Fonero's there are in London; i.e. what am i going to get out of it. And what about the broadband providers, I bet they're not going to be to pleased about it. Matter of time before they start writing non-fon clauses into their acceptable use policies...