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Fon: Google, Skype and hype- latest research, part 1.

March 4, 2006

I’ve been doing some research lately into developments in wifi and posted about it already here.I’m trying to make sense of it for myself, as a ‘lay’ person who knows a little bit about wifi and wants to know more, and I hope passing on what I find out will be useful to others.

Fon has changed the wifi landscape already, with their large-scale backing by Google and Skype (about $22 million at the last count). Because they have all this money and well-known bloggers on the board, and their founder is the guy who set up Jazztel and Ya.com here in Spain, (Martin Varsavsky- interview with him in Spanish here) they are getting a lot of users involved (several thousand in Spain already).

The idea behind Fon is not new, and there are and have been similar projects, like MyWifiZone , this in Spain: Akiwifi ,and there’s also a new user-friendly system that can be used with the popular AirMatrix mesh box: http://www.defactowireless.com/Air-Net.htm -they seem to be basically taking the ‘free or paid’ Fon model and using it with mesh boxes, which Fon, as far as I can tell, is not doing at the moment- everyone just shares their own broadband connection, either for free (in return they get to share other peoples’ connections in other parts of the world) or for money (the ISP and Fon get a share of this money) – only the free part is working as of now. Maybe they will introduce a true mesh-based system soon, let’s remember it’s only a young company.

Amid all the excitement about Fon, there have been some people urging caution (like this excellent article from The Observer, and The Register), and with good reason: I’ve been reading up on some Spanish forums and people have been digging out their broadband contracts and actually reading them- and it turns out that none of the ISPs here will actually allow their broadband to be shared at all, let alone re-sold, with the exception of Jazztel (which was started by Mr. Varsavsky), who are ‘thinking about it’- they’re obviously caught in the middle a bit between their founder and not wishing to upset the other ISPs.

On the other hand, loads of people are sharing their connections and the ISPs are not doing anything about it- but the paid model has not come into operation yet, and I imagine that is when they will start seriously deciding whether it’s a good or bad thing. They will actually get a share of the money so it could well be that they will change their contracts to allow sharing. There is also this to consider:

Según el artículo 286 del Código Penal, “será castigado con las penas de prisión de seis meses a dos años y multa de seis a 24 meses el que, sin consentimiento del prestador de servicios y con fines comerciales, facilite el acceso inteligible a un servicio de radiodifusión sonora o televisiva, a servicios interactivos prestados a distancia por vía electrónica, o suministre el acceso condicional a los mismos”

This basically says you can go to prison for sharing an ‘interactive service’ without the consent of the provider, and it is apparently part of Spanish law at the moment. It’s pretty vague though, I mean what is an ‘interactive service’?

On the other hand, I also discovered this:

En 20minutos.es hemos comprobado llamando a los servicios de atención al cliente que al menos en AUNA, no es posible, pero que sí lo permiten en Wanadoo y Telefónica.

It says that these guys from 20minutos.es have phoned different ISPs, and AUNA say that it is not possible to share your adsl, whereas Wanadoo and Telefónica say it is. The operators at Telefónica are notorious for knowing next to nothing, but it could be a kind of unofficial company policy. The Wanadoo terms and conditions definitely prohibit sharing your ADSL at all (someone quoted them in the Fon forum) so their helpdesk might not know what’s going on either. It looks like everyone is waiting to see how it all pans out, just like me. (part two coming soon).