BT Talks To Wi-fi Sharing Network
Link: BT Talks To Wi-fi Sharing Network
According to a Reuters’ article, BT is talking to Spanish wi-fi sharing network FON about a landmark deal that would strengthen BT’s mobile service.
BT has recently started promoting the use of wi-fi as part of its Fusion fixed/mobile, broadband and mobile service.
BT has thousands of Openzone access points across the UK and abroad, where customers can access the internet via wireless technology with no download limits. BT’s fusion handsets work in the company’s Openzone hotspots, allowing BT to establish a mobile network based entirely on unlicensed spectrum.
FON operates a community where users make their home wi-fi routers - which FON provides at a subsidised price - available for public use. This creates a network of hotspots which users can log-on to for a fee.
BT and other ISPs currently discourage the use of FON and similar networks. If BT does enter into a deal with FON it will be a public endorsement of FON’s business model.
A deal with FON would allow BT customers to start sharing access to their home Wi-Fi networks. BT Fusion mobile customers, who have mobile phones that can connect to a short-range wireless Wi-Fi network, as well as a cell phone network, could use their phones when they are in the vicinity of one of these Wi-Fi “hotspots”.
They could use their phones on the home networks of around 250,000 global FON members, known as “foneros”, 10,000 of which are based in Britain.
BT has said that it does not have a deal with FON that it can talk about at the moment.
