Thursday, December 07, 2006

Fon something for Latvia?

Bleveland alerts me in a private mail to a campaign in the Nordic countries to give away thousands of FON WiFi routers. FON is a kind of international cooperative, where if you share your hotspot, you get access to FON hotspots around the world. FON was started by an Argentine living in Spain. As described, the FON router allows one to split one's broadband access into a public (shared) and private signal. It is also possible to share in revenue from the use of one's FON router by being something called a BILL (it's all explained on the FON website).
There is no shortage of WiFi hotspots in Riga. A wardrive by the defunct (?) www.hackers.lv website folks a couple of years ago revealed around 200 or more hotspots in central Riga alone, in around 10 square blocks or less.
I am a bit skeptical because most Latvians are skeptical, even paranoid about anything that looks/claims to be cooperative, shared or free. But maybe I am wrong. This kind of share the bandwidth idea is something that should please the folks who make telecomblog.lv (a Latvian language blog). I am also interested in what Kristaps Kaupe thinks of this.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

It could be nice to know what Kristaps Kaupe thinks about this.

Thats because I got internet connection from company he works for at home, and at time I first started to use they advised not to share my Internet connection. (I have WIFI router at home for my laptop and PC. I hate wires at home environment)

My question is - Can I share my connection with FON router legally with no complaints from ISP?

Anonymous said...

Your skepse is well founded due to legal issues. First of all, most ISPs forbid to share the connection (or should I say, forbid to share the profit). Second, when I mentioned FON in my blog, one of the first responses was: "And what if some bad guy use this connection to do some bad things?" Which is a very good point, as I imagine the nightmare of explaining the idea behind FON to a thick-headed Latvian police officer, who hardly knows what a computer is... Bought an Edimax AP for LVL 26 instead.