Internet P2P Pty Ltd

No sooner did I post an entry about P2P Internet sharing does news pop all over the place about a company called FON. They are based in Spain - the company creates a framework that encourages members to share their Internet access with their neighborhood. The payoff is that they either choose to be a "Linus" and be allowed to use other people's Internet, or they can choose to be a "Bill" and get paid for their unused Internet bandwidth. The documentation is mainly in Spanish at the moment so I can't work out the details, but it seems to be some sort of mesh network. The software is a modified version of OpenWRT, and it runs on the Linksys WRT54G. One of the people responsible for the project has posted a more detailed explanation of their buisness model in the OpenWRT Forum.

The people behind the project are negotiating support from ISPs in many countries in Europe and in the USA. I'm very excited about the possibilities of such a project and I'm especially pleased that someone has worked out how to turn community Internet sharing into a (possibly) viable business.

I would love a project like this to become successful. If the concept Internet sharing became widely accepted in mainstream conciousness internationally it would put enormous political pressure on Australian politicians and the ACMA to relax the highly restrictive laws regarding Internet distribution in this country.

Now having said that, I don't think a non-profit community organisation such as Melbourne Wireless should attempt to run something like this commercially. MW could work hand-in-hand with a commercial entity to ensure that commercial users and community users aren't stepping on each others toes. Melbourne Wireless is definitely more of a "Linus" than a "Bill" - and in general the MW membership is of the "Linus" variety. Some MW members have even expressed that should MW ever become "ISP-like", they would leave the organisation. I see a role for a commercial body to play in a P2P Internet sharing project in Australia, but the current community groups are not suited to the commercial role.