P2P WiFi standard of the WiFi alliance is great for Fon

The long awaited WiFi P2P has been announced. This is how Om Malik describes it.

The Wi-Fi Alliance today issued a new standard to augment Wi-Fi, called Wi-Fi Direct, that turns a Wi-Fi chip into a mini access point. The technology allows your Wi-Fi gadgets to talk to one another without having to get on a network, and enables anything containing a Wi-Fi chip to combine with other WiFi-chip-containing gadgets to create a wireless hotspot. Using it, you couldn’t connect to the web without some form of backhaul connection to the Internet, but you could send files and share data between devices

At Fon we find ourselves in a great position vis a vis WiFi Direct because of a number of reasons:

First Fon is the largest global WiFi network in the world with over 650K Fonspots and growing both organically through the sale of our routers known as Foneras and through agreements with operators such as BT, Zon, SFR and others who install Fon in their routers. With WiFi direct Fon will spread not only through routers but through gadgets connected to routers so our signal will have more reach. Gadgets will act as repeaters.

Secondly Fon currently creates gadgets that convert mobile signal to WiFi, like the Fonera 2.0n that converts 3G to WiFi. But with WiFi Direct many gadgets can become Fonspots something that is now done in some occasions using special software as in the case of Joikuspot for example.

Lastly and most important because as Om Malik says this improvement just makes WiFi more useful, more ubiquitous, more available everywhere.