Social wireless networking is an idea whose time has come, especially in urban areas. Why pay a middleman to provide a service you can perform for yourself?

Fon is a growing network of people who use Wi-Fi to share their broadband connections. If you join the network and put your connection on the network, any other Fon member can use your Wi-Fi, and you can use theirs, too, free of charge. And that’s where the cheapo routers come in: You need special firmware in your networking equipment. You can download the code from Fon and install it on your router, or you can buy a router with Fon preinstalled, direct from Fon. There will be 1 million cheap routers available as part of a big push the company is launching today to grow its global network.

It is a very clever, highly viral way to get people to share their Wi-Fi connections. My big question: Is this legal? A spokesperson told me, “We don’t encourage using the service where it’s not legal,” but the Fon site doesn’t say where it is and is not. He also told me that several ISPs, especially those that are second and third in their markets, have approached Fon about partnering. Apparently, they see this network as something that will drive broadband adoption.

It’s interesting they bring up legality. I’ll bet eventually they make peer-to-peer networks not owned by a corporate entity illegal somehow, maybe by using some weird regulation.