You might remember the Spanish startup Fon, which promised to create an army of Wi-Fi "revolutionaries" who resell (or give away) their ISPs bandwidth depending on their level of participation. Originally, Fon just flashed Linksys routers with their own firmware, but after a while they began selling (in fact, sometimes almost giving away) their own routers. They've also struck deals with several ISPs -- a good idea since ISP TOS's tend to frown upon reselling bandwidth. Still, the deal(s) here in the states haven't accomplished much.

Fon grabbed a lot of early blogger hype for their not entirely orginal idea (see Linspot), ultimately leading to some additional funding by companies like Ebay, Google, and British Telecom. Not too surprisingly, the company has struggled with profitability, and was forced in 2008 to lay off half of their staff and stop subsidizing hardware sales. Now Fon is generating a new wave of hype this week with their announcement they're exploring femtocells, which would potentially allow for discount wireless calling over broadband. Blogs founder Martin Varsavsky:Of course mobile operators will have to sign off on this idea, and they won't want to cannibalize their own femtocell ambitions or wireless revenues. As we've discussed, femtocells help carriers by easing the strain on their local networks. While femotcells are nice for customers who need better indoor cell coverage, carriers have done their very best to limit the gear's value to consumers. Verizon's Network Extender femtocell solution, for instance, eats away at your mobile minutes despite saving money for the company.

Right now, companies like Verizon and Sprint are using femtocells largely as customer retention devices for customers who complain about poor coverage. While femtocells certainly should make waves the next two years as carriers start actually promoting them, it seems highly unlikely that Fon is going to be invited to the party.