Fon has five million hotspots, how are they managing the legal risk?
Thank you for this thoughtful comment, there is a lot of un-informed fear-mongering about the issues raised by internet use (see SOPA) and it is a nice change to hear a thoughtful set of questions. We certainly agree that American law is not as clear-cut or innovation-friendly as it should be!
Although we think our model is more competitive economically, we take our hats off to the hardworking people at Fon for entering this market early and successfully. Although we sometimes get this question, it clearly doesn't keep them from growing the business massively; nor does it stop millions of other everyday wifi-sharing use cases (Starbucks, public libraries, and on and on).
Incidentally, because the KeyWifi model is totally transparent, the hotspot owners know who is logging on to their router; they can set the hours of access and also block specific signons (or, conversely, block everyone *except* specific members). So this isn't a scenario where you are sharing wifi with strangers, it's much more like carpooling. (Fon as I understand it has a more traditional top-down telecom model, not a community-driven model like KeyWifi.)
Lastly, your point about routers is a good one, and a point of differentiation for Keywifi. The Fon solution requires a Fon router, whereas the KeyWifi solution uses the customer's own equipment, with a configuration change to use the highest level of encryption (if you're curious: it is "WPA2 enterprise" -- KeyWifi being the 'enterprise' in this context). So, customers are free to upgrade their routers (they all support WPA2 enterprise) as they see fit and at their convenience.
