2007 25
ISP Contracts and FON, Should You Worry?
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in Fon with No Comments
Yes, at FON we know that many ISPs contracts don´t allow users to share WiFi. And I managed three ISPs, Viatel, Ya.com and Jazztel and used to offer similar contracts for users. The intention of these terms and conditions is for ISPs not to lose money with customers who don´t buy new connections. Now when FON started I made it very clear to all ISPs that FON was a big plus to ISPs and that is why so many are or are in the process of becoming our partners.
FON is advantageous to ISPs for four main reasons. FON stops the leeching between customers and non customers of broadband that occurs when customers install Linksys or Netgear routers which come open. At FON, only those who pay for broadband share for free.
Secondly, because with FON ISPs have more people interested in broadband (pay at home and roam the world at no extra cost). The ISP offer becomes more valuable at no extra cost to the ISP. Thirdly, because with FON ISPs have less churn (people continue to pay even when they are rarely at home not to lose roaming privileges). Lastly, because FON´s rates for Aliens (non donors of WiFi), while very cheap on a per day basis compared to other WiFi networks ($3 first day $2 thereafter), have been priced high enough so it is NOT convenient to leech on your neighbor every day and not sign up with an ISP.
So even though FON is active in over 100 countries now, we have not received any requests of any ISP or Telco to stop marketing our services to their customers. As I have said in the past, if we do we will immediately inform FONeros to make quick plans to change from that ISP to another one that allows FON. We don´t want anyone to violate terms and conditions that ISPs choose to enforce.
At the same time, at FON we have seen that no ISPs, even those who actively sell FON, have modified their terms and conditions. I guess that is partly because their legal departments move slowly, but also because in most cases they want those conditions to stay there for services that are not a benefit to them. Moreover, FON keeps data on who access FON. Should a judge or court order request that data, we would share it with the law and we can identify the source of illegal activity from a Fonera as not originating with the FONero.
It took us a great deal of time and effort to develop the two WiFi network system, in which Foneros use the “myplace” network at home and the FON networks when they roam. We also protect FONeros with a potent firewall from viruses and with a bandwidth throttle from bandwidth depletion.
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Videoblitz on February 25, 2007 ·
Martin,
you are sometimes wrong with your intentions and publications about (legal) security in some countries, like Austria 🙁
i have emailed the problems here in Austria some weeks ago to you and FON Germany GmbH, but got no answeres. the problems are also published on the german community board http://fonboard.de. btw, why FON ignores the greatest language-based community in EU? the germanspeaking members have given thousands of houres of assistence to new FONeros, when the official FON support fails in the past. not one ‘thank you’ from you or FON, no listing of your “long tail” on top positions on the official fon sites? being disappointed …
a) 9 of the 10 greatest internet providers explicit prohibits to offer public WLAN hotspots. if wished, i will support you with the company names.
b) only ONE (Inode, an UPC company) of the top 10 providers in Austria offer a flat rate for privat customers.
c) no provider will contact FON, if the found a own customer in their networks, who operates a (illegal) FON hotspot. they will cancel their contract with the client and not contact FON for further agreements 🙁 i think, FON has to contact the providers for cooperation and not vice versa.
d) a ISPA (internet service providers austria) legal speaker says, a FON-customer is reselling his internet access to FON and FON resells it to other FONeros. so both have to register as service providers at the regulator RTR and, if FON is handling personal data of Austrians, FON have also to register at the Austrian DVR (data processing register) and not only in UK. it will also be helpfull, FON offers a immediatly reachable legal department contact for Austrian prosecution authorities, like all other internet and phone companies in Austria and other countries do so.
e) after many consultations of Austrian providers, the ISPA, the RTR and the BKA (“Bundeskriminalamt”, a prosecution authority) we must strongly recommend Austrians privates do not operate any public WLAN hotspots (not only FON), because there is a really high risc, to lose their internet access, their IT-equipment and to be arrested, if something illegal happened on their hotspot, like published on february 7th, 2007 by our interior minister on the “operation flo” case.
i think, similarly problems will be exist in other european countries and so it will be necessary, to check out urgently the legal situation of your members in the various european countries and also tell them.
Alan on February 25, 2007 ·
Hi,
The onus is on FON to publicly show which ISPs allows us to use FON and resell our bandwidth.
ISPs are clear, no sharing or reselling is allowed, and all ISPs I have seen are the same. If you just give us the names of ISPs we can use in NorthAmerica then we can turn our foneras on!
BTW, Boingo offers a special Skype plan on tens of thousands of their hotspots. Since they have the best locations, that could be a good idea. But the key is the location (in commercial spaces).
Regards,
Al
karl on February 25, 2007 ·
so, the best solution for austria would be very simple: all foneros should change to INDOE… in´t it?
JustCurious on February 25, 2007 ·
Hi Martin,
Thanks for sharing. I think I got right the pitch for ISP, but I don’t understand how you can leverage the same pitch for FON’s investors or your CFO.
In your pitch to ISPs, you seem to sugest that in your model you try to keep Aliens as low as possible, and if I got it right, unless Foneras is a lucrative business, Aliens would be your only source of revenue.
I’m not a FON investor, so you don’t need to reply, but out of curiosity, if it is not about Aliens, what is the plan to increase top line and bottom line (I’m assuming that the goal of FON is to make money).
Videoblitz on February 25, 2007 ·
no KARL, because the INODE company (=UPC Austria GmbH) also forbid to operate a FON hotspot.
Martín Varsavsky on February 26, 2007 ·
Videoblitz,
we believe we are doing great in Austria and have no problems with the ISP community there as we don´t anywhere else. Fon is growing wonderfully throughout Austria. If we hear from any ISP who has a problem with Fon we will let you know. As you can see in this post (link) ISPs are delighted with Fon around the world cause we make them earn more money.
And of course they would contact Fon if they had a problem with Fon! Why should they go after each Austrian? You have an unusual view of the world. With your views Skype would have never developed.
Martín Varsavsky on February 26, 2007 ·
Paul,
Hi! thanks for the info! there´s a portion of our site called ISP and friends, we will add it
Luca on February 26, 2007 ·
>after many consultations of Austrian providers, the >ISPA, the RTR and the BKA (“Bundeskriminalamt”, a >prosecution authority) we must strongly recommend >Austrians privates do not operate any public WLAN >hotspots (not only FON), because there is a really >high risc, to lose their internet access, their >IT-equipment and to be arrested, if something >illegal happened on their hotspot,..
The same happens in Italy!!!
Mark Tomin on February 26, 2007 ·
RIAA is also trying to make owners of Wi-Fi responsible for its users. So FON might not be a good idea for US soon.
Martin Varsavsky on February 28, 2007 ·
Msrk,
Don’t worry with FON. The authorities know its not you.
Martin Varsavsky on February 28, 2007 ·
Luca, as I said FON keeps an enormous amount of information that shows that it is not the DSL customer but the roaming fonero that is using the line. We have spoken to telecom authorities in many countries, cleared this situation.
Mike on February 28, 2007 ·
Martin,
Unless the Fonera is sniffing the traffic, and sending Fon the logs of what every connected user is doing online, then you have -no- way to tell authorities that a visit to illegal content was made by a visitor or by the owner. Does Fon log connections to the private SSID? Otherwise, how can you prove that the owner was not connected at the same time?
Your argument should be that you are more likely to die from crossing a road than getting busted by police by someone else dowloading illegal content on you WiFi, but don’t make guarantees you don’t have on paper.
Martin Varsavsky on February 28, 2007 ·
Mike,
I think your investors in Whisher would prefer that you grow Whisher than troll my blog.
euronerd on February 28, 2007 ·
I commented on a previous blog, where you commented that you talked to all 50 ISP’s…. Never a real answer. I call it hogwash.
Now: “We don´t want anyone to violate terms and conditions that ISPs choose to enforce.”
Is that so? Enforce? So it is OK to violate anyones terms and conditions as long as these are not enforced?
If you really mean that, we can violate FON’s terms and conditions as long as they are not enforced?
To paraphrase your words:
“I think your investors would prefer that you decline illegal actions rather than write half-truths to convince people to violate terms and conditions, in your blog”
Mike on March 1, 2007 ·
Martin,
You should notice carefully that what I post under the tech.am email/URL are my own opinions, and mine only. It takes me very little time to write them, my time is 99% with Whisher, otherwise we wouldn’t be where we are, would we?
I recommend that you read this article to get a better idea about what a troll is. Making legitimate questions or disagreeing is not trolling. A troll post would have been something like “so Fon sucks because it just does”, and that is not true nor an intelligent remark. Expecting good answers to hard questions is normal, and giving such good answers shows that you are really on top of things.
I remember a TV program in the UK that was basically an interview of someone famous (politicians, actors, etc.) – the interviewer was known for his hardness on his guests, but people actually fought to be on that show – if you could pass this test, to be asked the most compromised and difficult questions in front of a nationwide audience, you could do anything.
Martin Varsavsky on March 1, 2007 ·
Jos/Euronerd,
Not only are people FONeros, there are now many FONero government offices, towns, political parties –like the Socialist party (ruling party) of Spain–, do you really think that all these government offices who are FONeros are just all wrong and out of it?
Jos, I have hundreds of thousands of readers who agree or disagree with me, but I have you, Videoblitz and Mike Puchol as my trolls. I try to manage you the best I can and sometimes even learn from you, but pls give me a break. I need to run a company.
Martin Varsavsky on March 1, 2007 ·
Mike,
I get criticized in my blog every day of the week. Today people in Spain are 80% against me when I say that physical punishment on children is bad. But with you is always negative, negative, negative and absurdly negative, like in this post.
As I said to Jos, my other troll, there are many governments who are FONeros, how could governments be foneros and what you say be true?
Mike on March 2, 2007 ·
Martin,
I support your views on children punishment (we had our third daughter last week, so I know the feeling), nothing justifies hitting a child as a means of correcting bad behavior. I think anyone can lose his temper with a difficult kid and give a slap, but he should apologize and explain the situation – kids are small but they understand more than we think! People that made those comments on your blog should watch SuperNanny, it would open their eyes.
Regarding your view that my comments are always negative, I’d have to remind you that I helped your developers fix a rather nasty problem in the online maps (I also know why your UK address search is not working, still after many months, but after the recent events I’d rather leave the matter alone). My review of the Fonera was good, besides a couple of points (too much heat, and not-so-good RF design, and no LAN port), so I don’t think I simply troll and bash anything you do – I just ask hard questions.
On issue of ilicit activities, please have a look at this site by the RIAA, 7th FAQ, where it seems the official stance is that they will sue someone even if they claim that their WiFi was open and it wasn’t them. There seems to have been a case thrown out of court for this reason, and I certainly think that simply tying IPs to illegal activities is not right – actual evidence pulled from the user’s PC should back up the claims.
Martin Varsavsky on March 3, 2007 ·
Well i am glad to see you agree with my views that physical punishment on children. Very few in Spain seem to agree with them.
Videoblitz on March 4, 2007 ·
Martin,
I’m worried about your sentences 🙁 NO, I’M NOT A TROLL! Do you know some rules like a netiquette?
I also never said, that the FON idea is bad. I’m also not flaming. I’m only telling you in name of a lot other FONeros, that there is ‘only’ a real high risk for the hotspot owners, which can only be eleminated by a brainstorming to find some possible ways to fix it. Without any possibility to get in contact with FON for a serious discussion, it would be very heavy to do. You are discarding your ‘long tail’, the great intelligence of your community. With MY view, public ignoring or disqualifying your members is also not the right way.
Martin Varsavsky on March 5, 2007 ·
Understood Videoblitz. In any case, I promise to report and blog problems if we have them. As I said, we have many governments signing up with FON, governments would not do ilegal things.
Anirban on March 6, 2007 ·
I love the idea of Fon and would like to see it being ubiquitous in the future. But I donot like to see its CEO sweeping things under the carpet. And governments signing up with Fon does not provide immunity against prosecution for lesser mortals like us. Instead of ignoring unpleasant realities, I would like to see something being done by Fon to address the concerns of its members…not merely giving empty assurances. Sorry for being blunt about it, but once again, I would like to reiterate that Fon is a great idea and I wish it succeeds in its mission.
Eric on March 7, 2007 ·
Martin,
Great idea with FON… I just setup the first fonspot in my city. Although there are performance issues with the la fonera (becomes hot, poor signal quality and transmit power, no meshing, no diversity antenna, no port forwarding or UPNP,etc.), I think FON is a great idea overall.
To the others who continue to raise the issue of FON providing immunity or indemnity against prosecution, I cannot help but laugh. Who genuinely expects their service provider (why FON is in some way) to provide them indemnity? That FON is willing to provide logs of the bills and linus’ that use the fon network should be sufficient, and would be more than many other groups would give you. Nor do I believe that other ISP’s have a 24/7 legal team on standby so that I can call them up and have the police go away when they show up with a warrant because my wi-fi was used for child porn. In addition, it is quite likely that these individuals would choose to use completely open hotspots and not those that require a login of any kind such as FON or other hotspot providers.
On another note, I would like to see FON introduce wondershaper or some other system that could block torrents, emule, overnet, kazaa, ares, etc. because while most users don’t mind keeping ppl. connected, they don’t want people hogging all the allocated bandwidth or be liable for contributory infringement. I already run a linux gateway that blocks these, but would prefer to see it built in and enabled by default on the public fon ssid so others can share without being taken advantage of. This would also reduce the strain on the la fonera (torrents are stressful to hardware). It would also be good if our login details were encrypted, because one can snoop and obtain my fon login credentials quite easily.
Martin Varsavsky on March 8, 2007 ·
Fine, u win Anirban. Pls end, I am so tired of debating u!!!
Martin Varsavsky on March 8, 2007 ·
Thanks Eric! Great sugestions let me look into them.
Anirban on March 8, 2007 ·
I apologize for causing trouble to you.
Its not about winning or losing, Martin. If you lose and give up, I will lose in some ways too…I use FON myself and like the idea very much but the concerns raised here are real for most people I felt. So I commented. It is quite disappointing to see someone who is trying to reach out to people through his blog would end a discussion with a visitor who had just started visiting his blog…that too saying its tiring to discuss. I am neither an Argentinian, nor Spanish, nor have I lived in America long enough…I guess such reactions are some sort of culture shock I need to go through before I become less sensitive to such comments like the one you just made to me.
Anyways, I like Eric’s suggestions and would second that.
Martin Varsavsky on March 8, 2007 ·
Eric,
The way FON checks that this does not happen is by limiting the bandwidth that Foneros have available for others. But we can look into implementing other filters. In any case at Fon you are either a donor somewhere or you pay 3 euros for the first day and 2 euros every day thereafter. If you are a donor then you would tend to do your downloading at your own home and not use someone else´s connection. If you are not a donor you are unlikely to pay 2 euros too many days in a row cause it´s cheaper to get your own connection. Most people will do their P2P through their own connection.
Martin Varsavsky on March 8, 2007 ·
Hi, thanks Paulo for your comment. How would meshing help Fon? We can easily implement meshing but we don´t see how that would really help grow the movement. The concept of Fon is that you share a little WiFi at home and you roam the world for free. We believe that what we need is what we are about to introduce and that is the Fontenna which triples the range of a Fon signal. Meshing degrades quality and creates a fonero who does not contribute bandwidth.
euronerd on March 9, 2007 ·
Good customer support will increase FON’s signal range more than any Antenna will ever be able to do.
Martin Varsavsky on March 9, 2007 ·
Both are needed, Jos. As far as Fonero support we are very pleased with the progress but there´s more to come.
john on October 8, 2007 ·
I think both are needed as well. I just switched to a high speed internet provider for DSL thats affordable and reliable. I live in new york, and I they service all of the U.S. Check out the site if anyone is interested: http://bandwidthdomain.com
joe on January 26, 2008 ·
Even though there are contracts from ISP’s, people shouldnt have to worry about anything. http://t1-connection.com
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Paul Maunders on February 25, 2007 ·
Perhaps you should maintain a list of “Fon Certified” ISPs on fon.com so people could choose an ISP in their country that will support fon, without them having to trudge through the details of each ISPs terms of use.
I use http://www.aaisp.net.uk in the UK and they are more than happy for us to use Fon, so there is number one for the list 🙂