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BT Group chatting up FON for partnership


Good news all 'round for BT Fusion, BT Broadband and FON lovers of the UK: BT Group is reportedly in talks with FON for a hefty partnership that extends the services of both companies extensively. In exchange for allowing BT Fusion users to replace those pricey Vodafone minutes on their phones with free FON WiFi UMA lovin', BT will officially give its blessing to users sharing their BT bandwidth over FON -- ISPs usually frown on the practice -- and even go so far as to push a FON firmware upgrade to its own users' broadband routers. Subscribers can opt out, but we're sure plenty of users will bite at the chance, since signing up for FON not only gives you profit sharing from people who pay to use your access point, but also gives you free WiFi access to other FON routers. With the 10,000 FON users already in Britain, the country could become one of the top spots for free-ish WiFi, and might give BT one of the best UMA services around, but neither company is talking about the deal just yet, so we'll wait for everything to be legit before we do our little "free WiFi party" dance.

[Via WNN; thanks R Gomez]