Joining the Fon Movimiento
Thursday, September 14, 2006
While many cities across the US and elsewhere are grappling with the free wi-fi for everyone issue (and telcos and cable companies giving out stink about it), one company has an alternative plan - call it citizen-powered wi-fi.
Spanish-based Fon, with some big-money backing from Google, Skype and others, offer the firmware and/or hardware to let you safely share out some of your broadband access. Fellow Foneros (who are sharing their broadband at home) get to log in to your access for free, while others (aliens) can pay. You can choose to get free access wherever you roam (being a Linus - after Torvalds), or you can get a cut of the money from people logging on through your router (being a Bill - after Gates). With 87000 Foneros around the world, that might be very handy.
Free router (almost)
There’s a useful mapping system to help you find access points, and while coverage is of course patchy - this is real early-adopter material - there’s another benefit for signing up (at least in the US and Europe). You can get a Linksys WRT54GL broadband wireless router for $5/EUR5 (+ shipping), if you promise to share your connection for a year. The router comes pre-installed with the Fon firmware and setup is very straightforward.
So if you feel like taking a step towards more widely acessible broadband access, or you just need a new wireless router on the cheap, have at it. I’ve set it up at home as a trial (and as a replacement for an old 11b router), but if it goes OK, I’ll get one for the office - where the sharing would be much more useful. If you parked your car outside the house here, you might just get a signal, but the office is right downtown, so it’d make much more sense.