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Corporate Encouragement For Sharing Your WiFi

Posted by Zonk on from the everybody-in-the-phone-booth dept.

anagama writes "Conventional wisdom is that one should lockdown wifi, your ISP doesn't want you to share your connection, that person checking email outside the coffee shop ought to be arrested. The UK ISP BT is offering an alternative model. The company will encourage its three million broadband users to pick up a FON router and start sharing signals. 'For BT, the move makes its broadband offering more useful to customers, who can access the Internet from more places, and BT doesn't need to build out a new wireless network itself. BT's Gavin Patterson, a managing director, holds out hopes that the FON scheme can someday "cover every street in Britain." "We are giving our millions of Total Broadband customers a choice and an opportunity," he added in a statement. "If they are prepared to securely share a little of their broadband, they can share the broadband at hundreds of thousands of FON and BT Openzone hotspots today, without paying a penny." '"

4 of 173 comments (clear)

  1. Not for free. Charging extra users. by mjensen · · Score: 3, Informative

    From the article, FON is charging the extra users. It's extra revenue for them. The extra users aren't getting on for free.

  2. Some US providers try/tried too... by olden · · Score: 3, Informative

    Some providers in the US also try/tried that, starting as early as 2003, and usually hoping that non-customers would pay $$ to access their network through such user-provided "open" wi-fi APs. I don't think this worked overly well so far though...
    http://www.sonic.net/hotspots/
    http://www.speakeasy.net/netshare/learnmore/

  3. Re:Not for free. Charging extra users. by larry+bagina · · Score: 4, Informative
    how do you read that?

    Other "Foneros" can access the public channel for free, while non-Foneros can pay a few dollars a day to use the access points.

    "If they are prepared to securely share a little of their broadband, they can share the broadband at hundreds of thousands of FON and BT Openzone hotspots today, without paying a penny."

    --
    Do you even lift?

    These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.

  4. Re:Just two questions... by IndieKid · · Score: 3, Informative
    From the FAQ:

    What happens if someone uses my broadband connection to access an illegal site? Can I prove that it wasn't me accessing the sites?
    Yes, their access to the internet will be through a separate channel, so it is easy to identify that the access was through the visitor channel.