Last week I noticed BT have partnered with FON to create (wait for it..) BT FON (see what they did there?)

FON is “the largest Wi-Fi community in the world. FON is a Community of people making WiFi universal and free.” Essentially, ‘Foneros’ share their home Internet connections in exchange for free access to the Community’s FON Spots wherever they go.

Since Wi-Fi was introduced there have always been people, not necessarily intentionally, sharing their own or piggy-backing on other’s connections. For the very net-savvy and early adopters out there FON, which launched in late 2005, didn’t offer a first – you had years of fun inventing War-chalking, War-driving and all sorts of other methods which didn’t actually involve as much fighting as the names might suggest. But what FON did bring in to the equation was safety – a router designed specifically to allow secure shared WiFi access.

“From the beginning FON users believed in the concept of sharing and in the peoples’ ability to participate in building something important that would benefit everyone. With BT FON, those beliefs have proved to be well-founded.”

BT Group managing director, Gavin Patterson added:

“We are giving our millions of Total Broadband customers a choice and an opportunity. If they are prepared to securely share a little of their broadband, they can share the broadband at hundreds of thousands of FON and BT Openzone hotspots today, without paying a penny.”

“We have built a public Wi-Fi network and 12 Wireless Cities already, but today we are saying to customers, let’s build a Wi-Fi community together, which covers everywhere and serves everyone.”

You can find out more here.