Dana Blankenhorn writes about FON and notes among other things the difficulty of dealing with the broadband duopoly. But then a suggestion that is both stunning and exhilarating at the same time:
You have to get around the Bell-cable duopoly. That means finding competitive fiber, otherwise the duopolists just choke you down with contracts, calling what you are doing “stealing.” And if you’re going to the expense of setting-up WiMax to a neighborhood, you’re a WISP. I could possibly see such WISPs signing master contracts (as Bills) with Fon, but that still doesn’t get you free WiFi.
Although cheap WiFi would be a big improvement over even what America’s municipal WiFi sponsors (like Earthlink) are talking about. But can you imagine if Google set-up an ISP subsidiary that would run WiMax around cities from its current fiber and act as a master FONero affiliate? [emphasis added]
Now that’s an interesting proposition.
Imagine also if the FON software in the router were able to report its geographical location back to Google – as part of the login to the system, perhaps – and if Google were able to link that location to search requests coming from users served by that router. Quite apart from any revenue earned in the ISP share, that’s targeting that could mean something to the Googles of the world.