Monday, February 06, 2006

FON, Skype, Google and Sharing

FON is a global community of people who share WiFi connections. Official announcement from Yahoo news: "This wireless communications start-up in Spain that is partly a grass-roots social movement seeking to encourage users to share Internet access with their neighbors is set to announce on Monday $21.7 million in funding from big name backers, such as Skype Technologies and Google." Isen talks about it here. Andy's comments here. OM's post is here.

My editorial here: These are the kinds of things that WISPA should be working on, IMO. Creating an alternate network to the ILECs is something WISPs and CLECs should have been working on the last couple of years. Imagine if every chance possible all traffic - data, internet, voice, VoIP - went on a private network instead of the BOC network??? (For one, I would be out of business, but the BOCs would be reeling from the economic effect and they couldn't pull this paid peering crap.) Now I know that running a volunteer ISP association is extremely difficult and time consuming (I am in such a position with II4A). But the big picture is: DEVELOP THE THIRD WIRE!!! BEFORE YOU ARE PUT OUT OF BUSINESS.

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