AT&T offered more Wi-Fi coverage to international roaming customers on Tuesday through a deal with Fon, the Spanish crowdsourced wireless provider that lets users share their Wi-Fi with other Fon members. The coverage will be useful to wireless users in Portugal and Poland.
As part of the partnership, Fon customers, including those in the U.S., will get free access to AT&T's more than 30,000 Wi-Fi U.S. hotspots.
The partnership will provide access to about 800,000 Fon hotspots in Portugal and Poland to subscribers who buy the 300MB or 800MB AT&T Global Data Add-On services. Those plans, which cost $60 and $120 per month, respectively, include 1GB of data per month via certain Wi-Fi hotspots in addition to the cellular data allowances. The Fon partnership expands the number of hotspots that subscribers will be able to use.
Wi-Fi may play a big role in the future of international data roaming because it runs over unlicensed radio spectrum instead of more expensive and scarce cellular frequencies, analysts say. Wi-Fi also uses a set of frequencies that are nearly universal, bypassing the complexities of dealing with the many different cellular bands in use around the world.
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