Re: Free WiFi - BT joins FON

["Stephen Wing" <stephen@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

This is interesting news - BT Total Broadband customers can sign up
via the website, with no obvious payment required, which seems to
imply the hardware they already have supports FON.  This will gain
those customers access to lots of additional free wifi access point,
and equally, FON users will benefit from a lot more additional wifi
access points from these new BT FON members.  A non BT Total Broadband
customer can buy a FON router, and then sign up to BT FON (although to
buy a FON router, you have to have already signed up to FON, so I'm
not sure why you would need to sign up to BT FON specifically).

One strange thing, the FON and BT FON communities seem slightly
separate at the moment, so if you go to the FON Maps, you only get FON
members, whereas if you go to the BT FON Maps, you only get BT FON
members - a combined map showing all possible access points would be nice.

I see the FAQs also mention BT Openzone customers will be able to use
the BT FON access points, although with little additional detail
(unfortunately there is no mention of a reciprocal arrangement
allowing BT FON members access to Openzone).

A BT Total Broadband member will allocate upto 512k of his broadband
connection to be available for other members, so for many, this should
not affect them a lot.

Steve
(All info summarized from the www.btfon.com website - I could be wrong
though)