BT & FON Unites to Form the World's Largest Wi-Fi Community

BT and FON united urging the BT customers to become ‘foneros' and increase the hotspots in Britain by spreading the Wi-Fi network.

BT and FON (a Wi-Fi Community organizer based in Madrid, Spain,) have teamed up to support BT's three Million broadband customers to become ‘foneros' by sharing their network to increase the number of hotspots in UK.

By doing this, the users could use all other FON hotspots without any charge, including 190,000 globally and, thus could form the world's biggest community of Wi-Fi. Although this will confine them to the residential areas, they'll also become able to access the company's current BT Openzone, which includes 12 wireless cities.

This move could result in the formation of a blanket Wi-Fi coverage over urban areas and allow the operators of fixed-line services to compete partially with cell phone operators offering Web services on the move.

An analyst at CCS Insight, Ben Wood, called this move a potentially disturbing one and that BT might grab this chance to enter into mobile market from back door, as per the news of FT.com on October 5, 2007.

Further, N95, Apple's iPhone, Nintendo DS handheld console and Sony PlayStation Portable can also use Internet connection with the help of Wi-Fi. But there exist only 10,000-11,000 hotspots in the country.

FON COO, Diego Cabezudo, said that talks are on with other incumbents in developments that would soon make the connections of Wi-Fi ubiquitous, adding to the number of municipal Wi-Fi systems that are presently being deployed, as told to Computer Business Review.

FON is funded by Skype and Google, and has discovered that due to its cooperative approach, its partnership has been confined only to second-tier operators like US' Time Warner Club, as per CBR on October 5, 2007. But BT endorsements implies that it could play a major role in spreading the connectivity and high fees charged by mobile carriers for Internet connections, as BT has promised to invest a specific amount in FON and will also appoint a member in the board.

No doubt it will keep its focus only on consumers, but it will also invite SMEe searching for mobile connections for minimum outlay.

MD of BT's Consumer Division, Gavin Patterson, said that this is an exciting thing for BT. It launched a Wi-Fi network for people, which would spread in every streets of Britain one day, as per the reports of TIMES ONLINE on October 4, 2007.