Users who share their broadband service through WiFi sharing service Fon.com could find their breeching the Terms and Conditions of their ISP according to a legal analysis by Out-Law.com.

Fon.com which offers wireless routers to users for as little as €5 (about £3.40) encourages users to share their broadband service to other Fon.com subscribers. In return, access to other Fon.com WiFi is available to you to use - free of charge. Users who do not let other Fon.com subscribers access their broadband service can make use of other Fon.com WiFi by way of a €3 (£2) per day charge of which the user who does share his/her broadband keeps 50% of the charge - Fon.com keeps the other 50%.

Out-Law examined the 10 biggest ISPs in the UK, including AOL, BT, NTL & Tiscali, and found specific clauses banning either the sharing of the broadband service for a charge (in the case of AOL) or even if done for free in over 70% of those ISPs examined.

The concern that ISPs have is the possibility of abuse by 3rd parties on their network, not just from illegal activities (Fon.com tries to get around that through ensuring that wireless users must authenticate with Fon.com) but also from bandwidth abuse. Clearly, the odd webpage would not amount to any serious increase in traffice, but heavy use of Peer2Peer or Bit-Torrent technologies would.

So, broadband subscribers - beware. If your considering the noble idea of Fon.com - check your ISPs T&C very carefully.