Original URL: https://www.theregister.com/2008/06/04/bt_fon/
100,000 sign for BT Fon wi-fi love-in
But where are they all?
Posted in Networks, 4th June 2008 13:51 GMT
100,000 punters have signed up to BT's Wi-Fi love-in, sharing their home connectivity in exchange for having access to everyone else's, enabling the operator to call itself the world's largest Wi-Fi community.
Spot the hotspot
Previous attempts to get people to share their connectivity have fallen foul of usage restrictions, security concerns and (most importantly) self interest. With Fon BT provides a carrot in the form of access to BT Openzone hotspots, which are far more likely to be useful to the average punter than 512Kb/sec of connectivity on a residential street.
Assuming the punter concerned can find their connectivity. The BT Fon locator will tell you where your nearest hotspot is and we were delighted to find a couple in our favourite chunk of the Highlands, even if one appeared to be in the middle of a field. Given the weather it seemed an ideal excuse for a road trip, but unfortunately we didn't manage to find the promised connectivity...
We asked BT how it put the map together, but other than something about postcodes it's been unable to explain. So we thought you might like to have a look at the BT Fon locator and let us know if you can find an even more remote hotspot from which we can fail to file stories, send e-mail and generally pretend to be working. ®