British Telecom will launch in collaboration with FON a new service for its broadband subscribers, which will let them share their bandwidth with others.

BT, which invested along with other high profile names like Google in FON, invites its 3 million consumer Total Broadband customers to be a part of FON’s global community of people who share their bandwidth with others. That community already counts more than 500,000 people worldwide, and all of them have access to more than 190,000 FON hotspots. They will be available free of charge for any new member, including the new BT FON hotspots that BT readies for the near future.

The revolutionary idea for a massive Wi-Fi community, built by individual people and not a large corporate enterprise, marks BT’s boldest step yet in building extensive broadband coverage outside of  the home or office.

BT FON’s slogan for building world’s largest Wi-Fi community is “Wi-Fi for everyone, I’m in” and the principle that sits at the basis of this initiative is to have every member share a small portion of their home broadband connection, by opening up a separate, secure channel on their wireless router. This way they will be able to “enjoy” everyone else’s shared bandwidth and even more than that: British Telecom says that its Total Broadband subscribers joining the FON program will also get to access at no charge the company’s existing premium hotspot network BT Openzone, including 12 Wireless Cities.

BT FON wants to accelerate its development and include increasingly more users as soon as possible, using the secure open Wi-Fi solution developed jointly by BT and FON in their common research labs. As recognition of BT’s involvement in FON, the British company gained a placed in the administrative board.

“Today we are launching a people’s network of Wi-Fi, which could one day cover every street in Britain.

      

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,” said Gavin Patterson, BT Group managing director.