The crux of FON is to interchange bandwidth in your home with bandwidth outside of your home. This will enable you to pay exactly what you’re paying now but with much better service, since what you’ll have is access to a wifi nation. In addition, I realised today that thanks to WiFiFONs – which we plan to launch in November (a mobile WiFi telephone that connects to the FON network) – and the flat fee for a fixed line offered by Telefonica, Jazztel or Ya.comm to which most FON members are already subscribed to, users will be able to do something really neat.

The idea is the following: that each FON member connects his/her WIFIFON to the flat fee she/he is subscribed to so that, instead of paying us, say, 5c a minute, the user speaks for FREE. I suppose my marketing colleagues will say that this is shooting ourselves in the foot but while we will have to find another way of making money, from a user’s perspective, I think it’s great to be able to use your own connection to transfer mobile-to-phone.

How does this work? This little gadget might be the answer: a VOIP switch connected to a public network, a tool that can organise your own telecommunication. For the techis out there, it’s simple: become a FON member and buy a WiFiFON but configure it so that instead of paying us you have calls coming out of the flat fee you are already subscribed to. In other words, it will be like a mobile phone that uses your fixed line  without any additional cost. This wouldn’t be something FON would do, members would have to install it themselves. Moreover, even without FON, you can already do this just by downloading VOIP software in your laptop. You buy this gadget, and you get something better than SkypeOut, because your new tool is SkypeOut for FREE!

One thing is clear though: this little installation would never reach the quality of your current mobile since, where there is no FON, you won’t have any coverage!

Follow Martin Varsavsky on Twitter: twitter.com/martinvars

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