Talk:Fon Wireless

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ISPs that allow FON service By Country

There was news that Speakeasy actually never had any ties with FON. This makes me thing that they also never authorised FON's use. Still, they also indicated that they won't ban it.

There is another ISP issue. Comcast is listed in BOTH the allow and banned section. Any thoughts? Loompyloompy313 21:29, 22 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

i was about to ask about that.—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 68.100.5.79 (talk • contribs) 13:48, October 27, 2006.

See below --Randal L. Schwartz 16:13, 20 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Elisa Oyj (Finland) is listed as an ISP that allows FON service, but I'm not so sure about that. From their licence agreement, chapter 4.6 (http://elisa.fi/elisa/docimages/attachment/LK_Erityisehdot_EN_06.pdf): "The Customer shall not use its subscription to relay third-party traffic to the service or distribute services outside the Customer’s organisation unless separately agreed on with the Supplier." I suggest moving Elisa Oyj down to the do-not-allow list, unless someone has any contradicting sources.

- Student from Helsinki 130.233.15.200 13:55, 13 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

What you're saying definitely makes sense, the list of things that our country's leading isp never would do includes, apart from giving acceptable service, to never allow anything as useful as FON. All "joking" aside, an article in an early December '06 issue of Hufvudstadsbladet, spokespersons for major Finnish isps gave their official opinion on FON. Out of HTV/Welho, Sonera and Elisa only the latter made a big deal about their policy of not allowing reselling, "third party access" and the liability that the broadband subscriber possibly has for illegal use of his or her bandwidth. According to a collection of FON-related press coverage found here this article in the Swedish language paper hufvudstadsbladet would be available on their e-paper site, but the service seems to be borked at the moment, so I can't check if you have to pay-per-view or not right now. Epaper is a god awful Adobe Flash based system so not very surprisingly the page in question is not google cached... But i think I'll mark Elisa as not allowing. apecat 20:22, 6 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I have to correct myself a bit, the epaper website that Hufvudstadsbladet uses isn't all that awful, since it *doesn't* seem to use Adobe Flash (a proprietary, nonstandard, and sadly commonly used web annoyance available only for a few platforms). More embarrassingly, my problems with opening the site yesterday evening were caused by my habit of blocking cookies by default with the CookieSafe extension for Mozilla Firefox. Instead of warning about blocked cookies on a web page, the newspapaper's server sent back http errors. My main point, however, is that the article is available (in Swedish) by signing up for a free trial account.apecat 16:15, 7 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

What is the criteria for listing an ISP?

It would be good to have against each fon-friendly ISP a link to a public statement from the ISP saying that they are OK with customers having Linus or Bill hotspots. If the list is built based on an interpretation of the terms and conditions then this may be misleading and comes close to original research.—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 80.189.65.98 (talk • contribs) 20:38, October 16, 2006.

Then the list would be unnecessarily limited. I have received mail from customer support by specific dates where they say that FON is ok to use with Comhem.se (UPC is now part of Comhem) and Adamo.se in Sweden. So I added them. This is ok as a source in social science at university level. The idea is that it's verifiable because you can mail them yourself and that way check the validity. I suppose that I have done more than most people adding ISPs on this page. Cmlewan 16:38, 24 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

A personal email does not meet Wikipedia's standards for Wikipedia:Verifiability I think the whole list should be reviewed with the link for each ISP pointing to a clear statement or clear terms and conditions indicating that they support their users using FON. ISPs that don't have such a statement on their site (or I guess a statement reported somewhere else that is verifiable) should be removed from the list. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 193.36.240.5 (talk) 14:44, 6 December 2006 (UTC).[reply]

well I think almost all of them need a ^{[citation needed]} tag on that basis.—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 212.140.160.123 (talk • contribs) 15:02, November 30, 2006.

I'm going to remove any uncited ISPs. If people want them included on the list, they need to link to a relevant press release, or part of the ISPs Terms of Service which explicitly allows or disallows the sharing of their internet connection via a wireless access point.--Crossmr 15:32, 17 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Cleanup needed

This page is a mess, terms like "kiddy porn" and the list of suggestions really should go. I'd do it but I don't have the time right now. EAi 01:25, 6 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Cleanup done

And might I add, that: FON is an innovative commercial enterprise blatantly trying to pass itself off as an altruistic movement and abusing the name of the creator of the Linux kernel.—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 85.178.193.155 (talk • contribs) 02:07, April 18, 2006.

yeah and Bill Gates' name, too, lol—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 85.60.38.232 (talk • contribs) 15:06, September 27, 2006.

no they don t abuse anything.—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 217.243.166.82 (talk • contribs) 18:34, April 21, 2006.

Much of the information given is inaccurate, and all links other than the official FON webpage are not links to officially sponsored FON sites. Finally, the FON entry is obviously not written by high level English speaker.—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 213.134.45.253 (talk • contribs) 14:51, November 7, 2006.

I just rewrote the "Fon Network" section. The info in there wasn't bad but the english needed to be improved. See if you like the article better, I will try to redo the other sections soon as they seem to have similar flaws.—The preceding unsigned comment was added by Erikthe2nd (talk • contribs) 00:27, December 2, 2006.

Liability of users

There is considerable noise making going on, on the FON discussion boards about what the liability of hosts is, if someone connects through their service and participates in illegal activities.

The following quote appears to be from Richard Morrell. - The phpBB board has his email displayed, and I doubt this could have been fudged by someone else (without admin access to the board, and it hardly brings FON any credibility), however before this goes in the article the authenticity would need to be checked:

12 days ago I sat opposite two senior officers from New Scotland Yard in the UK with my hat on as Head of Internet Security for four of Europes largest Internet service providers.

I asked them this exact question to clarify over abuse/aup/child pornography wifi sharing issues.

In the UK as the law sees it if you put your Fonero router into your LAN and then it is abused for downloading of illegal content and its on your router/dsl/cable modem mac address and thats where the records stop then I'm afraid they aren't going to look any further than prosecuting you.

Thats the bottom line. The two guys I talked to head up electronic interception and work with the telco's and they're credible.

Dick

this is interesting, in germany someone abused the Tor Onion router to fake his IP, Tor: anonymity online, and it is reported that someone used an anonymous IP to post b0mb and murder threatenings, if I remember correctly,

The police only had the IP of the tor partner to use, and accused the innocent. This could happen with FON. I think only with vpn and ipv6 and a stronger authentication, this can be resolved. Anyone using my IP has to apply , otherwise I run a risk. Piggybacking bandwith and piggybacking my IP is impossible for the police to understand. I simply can't sue a fonero for abusing my IP. If IPv6 could be enforced and IPsec VPN, then noone can track the illegal activity to my IP. It must be safe, that My IP is not abused. Why can't fon put up an own VPN service? 145.253.2.236 21:00, 20 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Liability of users #2

Surely the above liability should be mentioned on the article rather than the discussion page?—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 82.45.207.118 (talk • contribs) 23:07, October 10, 2006.

I'm not exactly prepared to start putting material from a forum into the article. Probably true or not, unless we get the info from a reliable source its not beneficial.--Crossmr 16:13, 19 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Comcast Policy?

Just a note: Comcast is listed under both "ISPs that allow FON service (by country)" and "ISPs that do NOT allow FON service (by country)". Someone might want to look into this for clarification.

Drew Blood 21:53, 16 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

For the USA, Comcast is listed under both the allowed and disallowed lists for ISPs. It would help if there was some kind of clarification for this. Possibly a reference to a service tier page stating which plans allow the service.

Sorry about the duplicate topic, but a reference page really would help. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Lag10 (talk • contribs) 00:01, November 6, 2006.

Seems pretty clear to me. From Comcast terms of use:

Without limiting the generality of the foregoing, the Service is for personal and non-commercial use only and you agree not to use the Service for operation as an Internet service provider, a server site for ftp, telnet, rlogin, e-mail hosting, "web hosting" or other similar applications, for any business enterprise, or as an end-point on a non-Comcast local area network or wide area network.

Looks like Comcast forbids it nationwide. --Randal L. Schwartz 03:16, 6 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, I emailed them and heard from two different reps that they were aware of the FON service and it is OK to use. As stated above however, they need to make a formal announcement so we can cite it and change this page —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 216.57.200.50 (talk) 20:48, 3 January 2007 (UTC).[reply]

I just spoke with Comcast since I was unable to see a public fon_ap from my router and they *sort of* confirmed that FON is NOT blocked by them. The rep I spoke with basically said that you can hang a FON router off your network, but if Comcast starts seeing a lot of activity they will shut you down for abuse. -- Chabuhi 14:52, 27 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

SInce the "terms of use" page I referenced has not been updated, "speaking with a rep" does not constitute permission. I'm moving the "forbidden by comcast" entry back to its proper place --Randal L. Schwartz 01:18, 29 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Company of British law in Madrid

How can it be a "company of British law" in Madrid? And is it based in Madrid or in Alcobendas?—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 84.20.17.84 (talk • contribs) 10:22, December 14, 2006.

Due to the freedom of movement, which is granted in Art. 43, 48 of the EC Treaty, all persons (including entities) may settle anywhere within the European Union. Since requirements for founding a limited company in the UK are the lowest throughout the EU, a lot of companies are registered there. E.g. whereas you need € 25'000 of authorized capital to found a company with limited liabilty in Germany, in the UK you can start with just £ 1. Also the procedure of founding and registration is a question of days in the UK - in other countries it takes week up to months.
For more information on this see: [1]
--Cvdr 12:11, 2 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

What happened to the linksys routers?

OK, the article does not discuss that FON used to distribute WRT54GS routers for $5 each, nor what happned to them, and yet I have one sitting on my desk, with a big orange fon sticker slapped on it.

Also, I dont know who listed AT&T as forbidding FON. I talked to them, and they said it is fine so long as I do not exceed my bandwidth limitations (and I have a 6mb DSL connection, so I dont think that would be a problem). Iamdigitalman 13:58, 23 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Using their own hardware (La Fonera) allowed FON to lock down the router more than the Linksys ones in the past. Also the new higher price discourages people buying them simply for hacking. I imagine many of these ISPs say they do not allow FON because of the legal liabilities and hassle, and I believe that the less bandwidth you use the less it costs your ISP. When I first got high-speed cable internet the cost was for a connection to one computer, if you wanted to hook up more you had to pay more. Luckily ISPs have become more relaxed, but I don' think they will ever encourage sharing their bandwidth with the world. Voss 04:23, 22 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

OK, then. Someone should add that to the article, perhaps under a history section or something. i'll let someone else do it, as nobody likes it when I edit things. Iamdigitalman 13:57, 23 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

BT Change of policy

Will this (below) be added to the article? It got removed when I did. Why?Srw985 17:52, 28 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Looks like BT is not only going to allow FON, they are getting BT Fusion moblie to be able to use FON: Reuters article—The preceding unsigned comment was added by Matrixhax0r (talk • contribs) 20:09, February 15, 2007.

Fonero Gets Fonero program altered

I'm not sure if I should make the edit becasue I'm tired and would probably makes mistakes. The Fonero gets Fonero program has been altered, a Fonero gets three invites so that they can invite three people to purchase a La Fonera for $20 + tax + s/h.

Personally I think this is not good... Being a fonero in North America is not looked kindly upon by most ISPs and there aren't that many FON access points here anyway. Ewdin 05:52, 27 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

FON alternatives

I think it is important to talk about FON alternatives. The fact that linus think they are sharing for free, and that FON resells the bandwidth in their back is clearly a bad thing. There exists alternative services which offer free sharing for everybody, and offer much better conditions for selling the bandwidth. http://worldspot.net is a good example. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Sophana (talk • contribs) 09:33, 9 May 2007 (UTC).[reply]

This isn't an editorial. Its an encyclopedic article about FON. Please see WP:NOT wikipedia is not a soapbox.--Crossmr 23:46, 9 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Criticisms

Can people please re-list the criticisms with appropriate cital. I can vouch for their accuracy but can't find adequate docs. Sean keevey 19:10, 18 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Unless reliable sources can be provided, both showing the deficiency AND showing them as criticisms they can't be relisted. Often there are flaws in a product, but no one can ever provide reliable sources like a news article, or review of a product (non-blog) criticizing that aspect of the product. Wikipedia is not a soapbox.--Crossmr 01:18, 19 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]