Network World’s Wireless in the Enterprise Newsletter, 11/08/06
What’s FON up against?
By Joanie Wexler
The FON community is a grass-roots effort whereby residential Wi-Fi users share access across their wireless networks to their broadband Internet access connections. If the idea takes off, it could usurp (or create sources of interference in) muni/metro Wi-Fi networks being subsidized by city and county governments.
The muni Wi-Fi people are very touchy when people question their business models and whether Wi-Fi, initially intended as an indoor LAN technology, will continue to scale well across wide geographies. “Just come look at all the installations that are out there already working,†they challenge in a defensive tone of voice.
Indeed, there are something like 250 to 300 community Wi-Fi networks in operation today, though only a handful are largely populated cities. And the operations of most of these networks aren’t being challenged by a second, or third, or fourth provider entering the market (can you spell “competition?â€). Additional providers could potentially cause interference in Wi-Fi’s unlicensed spectrum, which offers equal access to all potential users of Wi-Fi’s 2.4GHz and 5GHz spectrum. It would be up to the providers to work these issues out among themselves.
Perhaps most interesting is whether it’s actually legal for individuals to simply choose to share their Internet access connections with anyone off the street. ISPs liken the move to “stealing†video programs over cable, which we all know is the ultimate telecom sin.
Then again, you might have any number of people within your home wirelessly sharing your Internet access connection at any given time, whom you may or may not be related to. Your ISP doesn’t know who and how many of these wireless-device toting folks are in your house (and presumably doesn’t care, so long as it can limit your overall access rate to what you’ve contracted for). Is there a difference if the party doing the sharing is inside our outside your walls?
Time – and likely a court case or two – will tell.
Just tell them that sharing is caring. But so far, do you think Malaysian will share their wi=fi network?
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