When BT first took an investment in Fon I thought it a great innovation. The ex-monopoly doing something innovative and useful that would leverage its assets (near-universal coverage) and provide a real consumer benefit.
Problem is, it doesn't work. I've tried using Fon when I'm away from proper wireless access a couple of times and it does one of three things:
(1) works until the connection just vanishes indefinitely
(2) works but requires you to log back in every few minutes or
(3) works but requires you to turn the connection on and off every few minutes
I lost and manually reaquired my Fon connection twelve times in the course of writing that last post. It isn't even a very long post and I wasn't doing much else at the same time.
I have a better solution than everyone giving BT money for a flaky connection away from home. Just turn off the security on your wifi and let anyone use it who wants to. Yes, we'll get some free riders. Yes, people (notably phone company lobbyists) will wax hysterical about liability for file-sharing over an unsecured connection (
demolished in UK case law). But I can see twenty secured wifi connections from where I'm sitting, most of them presumably sitting idle while their owners are out at work, and all I want to do is a little blogging and some email. Unsecure yours. I did. It'd not a problem.
(Picture from Howard Lake on Flickr)
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