Leader: Is BT-FON deal a real mesh?

There is quite a debate that rages about whether you should share your home broadband connection when it is flung beyond the walls of your home using wi-fi. (We're even running a poll about it here.)

There are those who want a completely locked down, it's-mine-mine-mine home wireless network. Which is fair enough.

Others unwittingly let others onto their connection, which isn't so great.

Others still find other people sharing their bandwidth, maybe parked up outside in a car or in a residence next door, and see that as theft. In fact the police increasingly see it that way too, as recent stories have highlighted.

But how about if you want to share your connection safely? How about if you want to use other like-minded surfers' connections in this way too, namely completely legally? And how about if you want that option far and wide as you travel?

Today BT teamed up with FON of Spain to launch something like that. The hyperbole talks of "the world's largest wi-fi community". Maybe it is, maybe not, depending on your definitions. But we like this idea.

The companies behind FON - Google, Skype, Index Ventures (of Skype and other fame), Sequoia Capital (too many tech successes to mention) and indeed now BT - know a thing or two about the power of networks.

BT Total Broadband customers have the option of hiving off a piece of their broadband connection in return for surfing 'away from home' near the routers of customers doing the same thing, for them.

Much has been said in the past about the imminent rise of mesh networks - the idea being that stringing together almost infinite numbers of nodes, internet-working and moving away from a hub-and-spoke base station strategy (in part, at least) is inevitable. But it hasn't really happened.

Could this be where that changes? It does need vast numbers of people to sign up but beginning with a BT base of three million appropriate broadband users who will then connect to others on other networks - or so the plan states - is a decent starting position.

silicon.com will be watching developments in this space closely - and expects more large-scale wi-fi announcements in coming weeks.