BTFON announced, WiFi sharing gets a shot in the arm

Just got a note in the Inbox from FON, the company that offers routers so you can share your WiFi. FON has partnered up with BT which gives them a huge potential audience. Instead of casting a generic net to expand the FON hotspot base, BT broadband customers can simply opt-in to BTFON. Obviously, the goal of a Fonero as they're called is to share their WiFi at home and then use other Fonero's WiFi when on the road. The more that participate in the informal WiFi network, the more coverage available. As one of the largest telecom companies, the deal with BT ought to go a long way towards expanding the network.

Although I have a FON router, I have yet to hook it up. I don't mind someone using the WiFi I pay for if I can benefit from a similar situation on the road. It's the security concerns that have worried me in the past; maybe it's time to take a closer look at that and re-evaluate. Do we have any "Foneros" out there that read jkOTR?

Comments

[Dale]

Hook it up! FON is actually secure. The router creates two channels - a secure private network for you, the other is the 'public' FON network. Even the public sharing network is not open and still require login/password from foneros & non-foneros alike who access it.

[Ingvarfa]

I have fon since 1 year, nobody has connect.

[Mark]

The security issues that concern me with FON are liability. I'm less concerned with people accessing my intranet using FON, and more concerned with cops knocking on my door one day because of strange traffic coming through my broadband.

[Scott_H]

I got one of the routers for free when they were running their promo last year. Like Kevin and Mark, I haven't hooked it up yet because of security concerns. That and the fact that until recently, we had pretty narrowband broadband DSL. I didn't want anyone else sucking up our limited bandwidth. We have T-DSL, and they are one of the few companies around here that officially condone bandwidth sharing via FON. Maybe I'll go for it one of these days.

[Peter]

Idea behind is that if you did log the traffic and can identify the person behind that specific IP packets this will be ok. And exactly this is what fon is doing. They are logging the traffic on the "public" channel and only let people in that identify by their fon account.

[Robert Irving]

I can't beleive that as "mobile warriors" you haven't yet cottoned on to thousands of free spots. The real benefit comes when you download the hotspot details into your TomTom.

As previous post, security is fine with the dual-channel FON, although there is some flakiness with the unit - I prefer to use a Linksys and flash it with the FON software.

[Kevin C. Tofel]

Robert, in the surrounding 20 miles or so where I live there are VERY few free hotspots; FON or otherwise. Too rural of an area, which is why I have a 3G modem. ;)