From next year Chrysler, the third-largest automaker in the States, will provide most of their Chrysler, Dodge and Jeep models with a “uconnect” system that will give the vehicles a 3G cellular Internet connection shared throughout the car over Wi-Fi. This, as a similar service I reviewed last March, proves how WiFi keeps thriving as a common language spoke by laptops and gadgets (like the ones built by Apple, Nintendo or Sony) and turning 3G into a WiFi signal will keep making a lot of sense for more then a few years.

Chrysler is an American brand and we don’t see many of its cars here in Europe, so if you want to turn your car into a WiFi hotspot you’ll soon be able to do it with Fon‘s help. We are making a lot of progress into enabling our users to plug an HSDPA modem (like the ones most operators give you for free if you pay for a monthly data plan) into our upcoming Fonera 2.0, that as you know has a useful USB port. Once you’ll have bought a Fonera 2.0, got a HSDPA modem from your mobile operator of choice and found a way (there are many)  to power your Fonera, you too will have WiFi in your car for all your family’s gadgets (iPod touch, Nintendo DS, PSP, laptops, etc), and probably at a much lower price then Chrysler’s option.

I’m very glad to announce BT FON, the WiFi community we built with BT, has now more than 100,000 members in the UK. This is a great confirmation of how FON is great for telcos and ISPs and how fast Fon can grow thanks to deals like the ones with BT, Neuf or the most recent with Comstar.

BT, one of the world’s most innovative telecom operators, has partnered with FON because it understands the value that FON gives to its customers. We integrated FON into BT’s broadband platform, allowing BT users to share their Wi-Fi like the rest of us and have access to all BT FON hotspots, 3,000 BT Openzone hotspots, BT’s UK wireless cities, and Fon’s global network of hotspots. Of course, all our Foneros can access BT FON hotspots in the UK for free.

This is the press release by BT:

BT today announced that it has attracted over 100,000 members in the UK to BT FON, the world’s largest Wi-Fi community, where members share their broadband connection to establish a network of wireless hotspots. BT has also been recognised for its success with the BT FON community project, launched with its partner Fon, by being named the most Innovative Wireless Broadband Company by the 2008 Wireless Broadband Innovation Awards.

Since the launch of BT FON in October last year, 100,000 BT Total Broadband customers have come together to join the BT FON community, creating thousands of new Wi-Fi hotspots up and down the country.

In addition to the BT FON network in the UK, BT Total Broadband customers that join the BT FON community can access 3,000 BT Openzone hotspots at locations such as hotels, airports and railway stations, BT’s 13 UK wireless cities, and Fon’s global network of 190,000 hotspots. This provides BT Total Broadband customers with unrivalled Wi-Fi coverage across the UK and the rest of the world, allowing even more customers to experience the benefits of broadband both at home and when out and about.

Every BT customer that joins the BT FON community agrees to share a small portion of their home broadband connection, by opening up a separate, secure channel on their wireless router – the BT Home Hub. They are then able to use, free of charge, the BT FON hotspots of other members, BT Openzone hotspots, BT’s UK wireless cities, and Fon hotspots around the world.

Jon Hurry, Director Internet Services, Consumer, said: “It’s great to see BT Total Broadband customers joining forces to set up a people’s Wi-Fi network across the UK. BT has been instrumental in creating Broadband Britain, and we have built on that by calling upon entire communities to come together to create a Wi-Fi network that covers the country, driven entirely by local broadband users.

“We’ve already built extensive Wi-Fi coverage across the UK with BT Openzone and 13 Wireless Cities, but with more people signing up to BT FON everyday, Wi-Fi coverage in the UK is set to get better and better.”

Customers that sign up to BT Total Broadband Anywhere automatically join the BT FON community. Broadband Anywhere is the new all-inclusive broadband package from BT which offers customers a free, internet enabled Smartphone – the BT ToGo – for just £5 more per month than the price of BT Total Broadband Option 3. Today’s announcement means that Broadband Anywhere customers can enjoy unlimited access at even more wireless hotspots around the UK, allowing them to surf the web, email, make calls and text, both at home and out and about.

BT Total Broadband customers that are interested in joining the BT FON community can visit www.bt.com/btfon for more information about how to sign up. Customers can also visit the website to obtain a view of their local BT FON network. By simply entering a postcode, they can find the nearest BT FON or BT Openzone hotspots near to their home and to other places of interest. To encourage other people in their area to join the BT FON community and give their local Wi-Fi network an extra boost, promotional materials such as posters are also available to members to download from the website.

Customers who want to connect to broadband via BT FON while abroad can also visit the website to find Fon hotspots in other countries around the world.

From the summer, non-BT Total Broadband customers in the UK will also be able to join the BT FON community by purchasing FON’s Wi-Fi router, La Fonera.

I am glad to announce a FON has just signed an agreement with Comstar, the main telecom operator in Russia, a partnership similar to those we have with BT in the UK and in other countries with other operators.

Comstar and FON will jointly develop a Wi-Fi internet access network in Russia, initially focusing on Comstar’s subscribers in Moscow, who will be able to easily join the FON Community. Comstar plans to establish 30,000 Wi-Fi access points in Moscow in 2008-2009 before expanding to other regions.

Comstar’s users will be able to rent La Fonera routers, connect them to their Internet connection and join the FON network. Like other Foneros, they will be able to roam for free in any place covered by FON, including the Comstar-FON network, using personal login and password details for Comstar’s DSL network. People who are not Foneros (we call them Aliens) will be able to access Comstar-FON’s network using pre-paid cards, SMS or the usual options available on our captive portal.

Russia is particularly interesting for me: three of my grandparents used to speak Russian and during high school I was known as “el ruso”. However I’ve never been to Russia, even though Sistema, Russia’s biggest telecom company, is one of FON’s shareholders. I’ll be there for the Comstar-FON launch party and I’ll let you know my impressions on this country.

Together with BT we created BTFon and we develop campaigns like this with Peter Crouch. In this video you can see the FON team doing the Mexican Wave… with a style of its own.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=M3FLMtnRC0o

What’s important with this is the great number of foneros we got thanks to BTFon. Unfortunately I can’t share how many of them, because BT prefers announcing the numbers later on, anyway what is clear is that BTFon has a great image and is attracting a lot of people.

Now that we have began giving La Fonera 2.0 to coders, I started dreaming of new apps that I like to see done over the standard Fon functionality (give me WiFi, give some WiFi to others, allow me to make money with my WiFi, allow me to roam the world for free).

As you know the Fonera 2.0 is like a minicomputer that, other than being a social WiFi router, can do all sorts of things so long as we program it. And even more if we add an audio in, a mike, a speaker…

Here are the ideas, the good, the bad and the crazy ones.

-Fonera bridge functionality so i can get any encrypted signal or open signal from inside the home and turn it on the window to Fon signal.

-HSDPA to WiFi converter so HSDPA can be useful in many devices. For this the Fonera 2.0 should have a car plug or an external battery pack.

-Mesh functionality for wireless communities that, as opposed to foneros, have people who want WiFi and don’t have DSL or cable.

-A Flickr uploader so i can put the SD reader straight to the USB drive of La Fonera, go to my Fonera web page, instruct the Fonera to send those pictures to Flickr, leave my home and have La Fonera send them over the next hour or so. Same with Photobucket and other popular picture services.

-A youtube uploader so i can get my favorite videos into a pen drive or SD, stick it into the Fonera, upload them to Youtube while my laptop is doing something else or i left home.

–Bit Torrent or Azureus: download my favorite movies and tv series (that are legal to download) into my hard drive that is plugged to La Fonera 2.0 all this while I am not at home or doing something else.

-Combine La Fonera 2.0 with another piece of WiFi hardware that goes in an amplifier and receives streamed music from my computer over La Fonera, or from a hard drive in La Fonera that I left programmed to do this. This hardware would be like a WiFi music receiver that gets WiFi signal and transforms it to audio out.

-Same idea, but with video and my TV so i can get video delivered to my TV over WiFi.

-An app that once i have the WiFi receiver in my TV shares my screensavers with my TV’s so i see my family and friend pictures in large TV screens.

-A network hard drive for both individual files and a WiFi back up system. This could be combined with www.getgspace.com as well.

-A WiFi network printer with printer plugged via USB to La Fonera.

-A wireless USB functionality so La Fonera can be somewhere and the peripherals somewhere else.

-A home monitoring system for security/babies that not only allows me to see, but to talk back to people near the camera again using already existing cameras. Even just a microphone without a camera would be good so you can listen to what is going on around La Fonera like a baby monitor.

-Buttons that could be on La Fonera and given specific uses, for example, that are pressed when an older person takes medication so this person can be monitored from the outside. If they don´t press the button, they may need a phone call reminding them to take it or they maybe simply……. dead. On a similar vein a panic button for security reasons that is tied to a security service.

-The ability to add a simple keyboard and monitor to La Fonera to use it as a simple Linux computer (i would need video card and probably a more powerful computer). But this simple computer could do tasks that i may not want my expensive laptop to be doing, such as being a media server.

-A WiFi pbx system for telephony.

-An iPhone app that sends music from my iPhone into La Fonera over WiFi so La Fonera sends it to my audio system (that has WiFi receiver). In general, I feel that what the iPhone and iPod Touch should do is allow me to walk into my home and send music to my stereo.

-A Facebook app (for this La Fonera needs to have a speaker) that would work like this: you would go into the Facebook app and program your Fonera to make funny noises when your friends poke you, to read you your timeline, to read you your messages and anything else you would like it to say. Ideally this Fonera would be a special purpose product that looks like your FRIEND in Facebook, like a robot that tells you all these things, that moves when you are poked, etc.

-An interface with Rapidshare and Megaupload, two extremely popular file exchange sites (again, with all the caveats of this being legal).

-A simple app that turns La Fonera into an alarm clock that wakes up up in the morning, or a more complicated app that is connected to the Google Calendar and makes La Fonera remind you of things to do.

-The famous FATERA, a scale with WiFi connected to La Fonera that posts your weight every morning to groups that are trying to lose weight, sort of AA but for losing weight and at home. Similarly you could have breathalyzers for people actually on AA so others can know if you drank. Again social pressure to lose weight or stop drinking.

-Sensors that can be attached to La Fonera so you can be warned of temperature changes in your home or fire or simply make temperature graphs of your home. These sensors would have to be away enough from La Fonera so its temperature does not affect them.