BT does it again and they’re well on their way now to win our “Smartest Incumbent Operator” award, assuming there is such at thing at all. They earned our respect a while ago, by releasing a non-biased VoIP guide for businesses. Now they announced a partnership with guerilla WiFi network provider Fon.

If you don’t know FON, they provide a community-based free wireless access network for everyone willing to share their own network, creating a international free WiFi cloud for its members. Incumbent operators have traditionally been eager to block such services, claiming their terms of service don’t allow sharing of their broadband internet connection to multiple computers.

BT’s move is both bold and smart, they are inviting their three million broadband customers to join the FON network and enjoy free WiFi by sharing a piece of their own broadband connection. They will be joining a network with already has 500 000 members. It’s obvious that BT’s contribution to the network is very significant.

This is an important step in achieving ubiquitous free broadband access everywhere. If just one of the big players in each country does the same, we’ll be finally rid of those pesky, overcharging, commercial WiFi access points that nobody uses anyway.

Now it’s just a small step to voice calls on this WiFi network with mobile phones such as the Nokia E-series. FON even offers an application for S60 based mobiles to help you locate and login to the available hot spots. This will allow consumers to call for free or at reduced tariffs and provide roaming business users to access the company’s phone system at any time, for free.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 10th, 2007 at 00:53 CEST and is filed under Industry. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.