FON, Speakeasy, discord
p2p news / p2pnet: Yesterday came the news that Google, eBay’s Skype and two venture-capital firms will invest almost $22 million on a Spanish p2p Wi-Fi deal designed to allow people to share their Net access with others – for a price, under the commercial end of the project.
"In America Speakeasy has said that they welcome FON and in Europe, Glocalnet and FON have signed an agreement so Glocalnet sells its services FON ready and the Swedish foneros will soon be able move around Stockholm and other cities with their WiFi enabled gadgets," says FON founder Martin Varsavsky on his blog.
But, "I just received this missive and permission to share it from Lynn Brackpool, a spokesperson for Speakeasy Networks," says Glenn Fleishman on Wi-Fi Net News.
“FON has falsely announced that they have reached an agreement with Speakeasy regarding support of FON’s wireless product. This is 100% completely false. No relationship, financial or otherwise, exists between Speakeasy and FON. In fact, Speakeasy was the first to pro-actively support wireless broadband sharing amongst its subscribers many years ago. Indeed, FON’s product appears to be built on a premise Speakeasy introduced in 2003 called NetShare which involves individual revenue-sharing agreements among wireless users (http://www.speakeasy.net/press/pr/pr070803.php).
“We are currently involving legal counsel to demand a retraction from FON regarding their misleading announcement.”
All’s well that ends well, however, and in an update, "No relationship, financial or otherwise, exists between Speakeasy and FON," says Speakeasy.
"The impression may have been created by FON because Speakeasy has always supported an open wireless sharing policy. We have contacted FON and they too understand that no implicit agreement exists between Speakeasy and them in terms of their service.
"We are satisfied with their response and do not plan to pursue any legal recourse."
Also See:
Net access – Google, eBay, buy into p2p WiFi, February 6, 2006
blog – A dream come true, February 5, 2006
Wi-Fi Net News – Speakeasy Says No Deal with Fon, February 6, 2006
