What's unusual about this is that the backer of Wippies is Saunalahti, which is one of Finland's biggest and most successful phone network operators. You'd think they would be nervous about people using their phones to make free Wi-Fi VOIP calls, after all many American and British networks have tried to disable VOIP and Wi-Fi in phones. By contrast, Saunalahti seems to be not only embracing Wi-Fi but actively giving away the necessary hardware and encouraging people to open their connection to others.
It's difficult to know how Saunalahti expects to make money from this, though. Perhaps they eventually intend to follow Fon's lead of offering Wippies access to non-members for a small fee, which is then shared between the owner of the router and the company itself.
You can click here to see a map of the location of current Wippies boxes. One or two are in countries where Wippies hasn't officially launched yet, which perhaps indicates tests for future expansion?