Time Warner Cable will let its home broadband customers turn their connections into public wireless hotspots, reports the Associated Press and confirmed by GigOm.
The deal uses hotspots from FON and use Time Warner Cable for the backbone connection. Ironically, Time/Warner Cable has been among the most aggressive is shutting down public WiFi hotspots that use their network for a backbone.
Fon has forged similar agreements with ISPs across Europe, but so far has met with little success among U.S. consumers. Time Warner Cable, which has 6.6 million broadband subscribers, should boost its presence here, and enable it to compete with the growing municipal wireless networks and WiFi/cellular companies like T-Mobile.
Fon was founded in Spain in 1995. At first, the company offered software that let members, called Foneros, turn Wi-Fi routers into shared access points.
In the fall of 2006, Fon, which counts Google and eBay’s Skype among its investors, started selling and sometimes giving away its own branded wireless router, called La Fonera. Since then, it has distributed about 370,000 of them worldwide.
La Fonera splits a Wi-Fi connection in two: an encrypted channel for the Fonero and a public one for neighbors or passers-by. Foneros can decide how much of their bandwidth to share with the public and can log on to any Fon router without charge. “Aliens,” as Fon calls nonmembers, can register on a Web page and pay a modest $2 or $3 for 24 hours of access.
T-Mobile HotSpot access at Starbucks can cost $10 for a day. But the devil’s in the details. Most cable subscribers (and wireless users) may decide it’s not worth the extra hassle (or expense), especially if municipal wireless networks are available.
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