There are currently two major wireless internet access providers in the country today; Airborne Access and Globe Wiz. Currently, the cost is approximately PhP100/hour of access or less, if you decide to subscribe to the service. Having WIFI access in places that you frequent is heaven-sent especially when you are a road-warrior. I am glad that I have an Airborne Access account (expires next month, I believe) but frankly, I have not used it as often as I have expected.
Anyway, what if you can get WIFI access for free all the time? Intriguing, huh? Well, if we employ the same open source philosophy to WIFI access, then we will probably have a wider deployment at less or no additional cost at all. How? Check out the FON project at
http://en.fon.com and you will find out how home owners (and Fon members) with broadband connection are sharing their bandwidth with other Fon members for free (there is an option to charge for access, too). The main concept is to share your internet to Fon members and you access the internet off of other Fon members’ internet when you are within their area.
I raised a question to one telco not too long ago and still have not heard from them. Maybe it is OK to share your single dsl/cable internet connection with your other computers at home via a hub (do they still sell those?) or a switch. If that is the case, then the Fon movement can be started in the country.
On Fon’s website, you can find a page that details its benefits for ISPs. These benefits are easily achieved should the ISP themselves subscribe to Fon. Here are the benefits (quoted off of the web site):
1. Generate additional revenue through sharing Aliens’ revenues
2. Provide free WIFI roaming and a social networking platform at no extra cost
3. Differentiate their service offer from the competition
4. Increase broadband penetration especially in small businesses
5. Use of the FON platform to launch wireless services
6. Reduce churn and attract new customers by benefiting of the brand association with FON
You may find the definition of Linus, Bill and Aliens on the same web site.
Imagine if you subscribe to a Fon-member ISP, not only can you access other ISP subscribers (who are Fon members) in other areas to share their bandwidth, you also get free world-wide roaming, since Fon is a world-wide project. Each access is done via a username and password, this, somehow, ensures that Fon members are not abusing your connection.
All these at no extra costs for the ISP except for being part of the Fon network. Cool, huh? What do you think? Will you be part of the Fon network? If you are interested, let me know -- we’ll setup a local chapter.