FON is an illegal matter? I doubt it … In various countries around the world FON has alliances to ISPs: in France there’s Neuf Cégétel, in Belgium Scarlet, in the USA Time Warner Cable. The Netherlands stay behind in that respect: no ISP co-operates with FON although Surfnet says it’s willing to join hands in this.

In the Netherlands the ISPs are making people dependable on UMTS with regard to have wireless internet connections. Waiting for the auctioning of WiMAX licenses ISPs don’t want people to leave the telecom-providing partners which most ISPs have close relations with.

Another question raised to be answered is whether it is more illegal to make people dependable on these cartels of ISPs and telecom-providers than it is to share a little bandwidth around the tiny FON Hotspots.

Perhaps the big mistake Boris made is to put too much confidence in a healthy competition on Dutch ICT-markets while it was clear to everyone that KPN wanted to restore its monopoly position on the telecom-market while it was also clear to anyone that cable providers were setting up telecom-services and cable internet services. KPN formed a cartel with ADSL-providers, sharing its telephone cable network with them. The next step should be to outmarket independent WiFi-providers, WiFi being an ICT-service which cable companies couldn’t provide on a large scale because cable networks aren’t that widespread as the old telephone network is. Nowadays every KPN phone-box is a WiFi Hotspot and public places are offered money to provide WiFi Hotspots. Free WiFi Hotspots companies offer free hotspot materials if enough turnover can be expected.

And there is FON. FON is duty free. FON-routers are reliable.

It remains an open question what how ISPs will react to FON’s fast spreading success. 2008 looks like a breakthrough year for FON. Alas NMA has decided to give less priority to prosecute ICT-cartels. Otherwise people may wake up and see how they collectively pay too much for their internet connection.

What I suspect (but don’t know for sure) is that they encrypt and tunnel all FON traffic in a kind of virtual private network like situation. They need some solution like that for billed access as well. And for privacy from the guest access point – which might routinely run a sniffer on all FON traffic.

So, if done the right way, a person doing illegal things may leave an IP address which eventually can be traced back to some central FON server (and related logfiles).

Still, this may not be how it works. And I have to trust FON that they will protect me in case someone come complaining about a FON user, who connected through my accesspoint.

And this is what’s at Dow Jones Newswires: “BT Plans To Build World’s Largest WiFi Network Via FON Deal” – http://tinyurl.com/35dhrx

So now, they are legal with one of the biggest carriers in the UK. Smart move. Thay also have a signal booster available which will extend your router’s coverage. It’s a tipping point for FON, as BT are a huge player.

- David

I actually did use FON during a conference. I must say, that was value for money. a whole day for 3 euro.

One other thing… They raised a series B from Index and some others. Another 13 million dollars. They can send a lot of routers around the world from that money :)