A friend passed me the link to FON - a new semi-commercial alliance between people who share their wifi access points for the neighbourhood - if you join FON, you'll get access to all other FON access points for free.
While an interesting proposition in principle, there will no doubt be complications for people who choose the 'Bills' subscription option - a bandwitdh for sale / revenue-share model which most ISP's fair usage policies likely prohibit.
Also, bandwidth shaping / QoS is again 'in development', and hence doesn't fulfill my requirement for sharing a connection partially.
See also: Ethan Zuckerman: Martin Varsavsky and FON and WRT54G wifi router bookmarks
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about fon: i don't think that Varsavsky nice idea need to involve the word money (at least, when you are obtaining profit from resources other person is paying for). that's the reason why i am collaborating in a project named WiFree
WiFree is open source and is based on a fully non-centralized P2P authentication and reputation model so you can share your bandwitdh limiting freeriders. by using WiFree in your router you can be sure when you open your wireless hotspot!
there's a version for linux and the linksys wrt54g family too.
we propose a simple model: you get internet access from any WiFree hotspot if you also provide WiFree access to other users in a fair way
you can have a look and get the WiFree from http://www.wifree-project.net
have a nice wifree!!
jooe