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Fon Wireless

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This article is about sharing Wi-Fi Internet Access. For other uses see Fon (disambiguation).

FON is a router software program that allows people to synchronise their WiFi broadband access all over the world. Participants are called "Foneros" or "Foneras", falling into three categories: Linus, Bill, and Alien. A Linus is any user who shares his/her WiFi in exchange for free access throughout the Community wherever there is coverage. A Bill is a user who, instead of roaming for free, prefers to receive 50% of the fees that FON charges to Aliens. And Aliens are those users who do not share their WiFi access and therefore must pay FON a modest fee (2 dollars for 24 hours) every time they connect through a Fonero access point. Thus the system can be described as a peer-to-peer sharing service, which we usually relate to software.

Based in Spain and led by the entrepreneur Martin Varsavsky (founder of Jazztel), FON was unveiled at the O'Reilly Emerging Telephony Conference, held between January 24-26, 2006 in the United States. At present, the software is still in an experimental Beta phase and is only available for Linus.

Challenges

Although FON has received some financial support from companies like Google and Skype, it remains to be seen whether the idea can actually work. There are three main challenges for this type of service at the moment. The first is that it needs much media and community attention in order to get through the "early adoption" phase and into more mainstream use. Second, sharing your Internet connection is often against the terms of use of your ISP (Varsavsky has since stated that ISPs will receive a fee if they allow FON use, which may affect this). This means that in the next few months we can see ISPs trying to defend their interests in the same way music companies united against free mp3 distribution. Finally, the FON software is still in beta and users will need time to make sure it is usable and doesn't present any serious security issues.

User Types

Linus

This type of user has a fon router and shares internet. Linus users surf for free on other Linus's Fon routers. They pay $V.00 (USD) (V could be 0) (daily/monthly/per byte) to use Bill's internet. Each Linus has a single username. This means that if a family shares their internet as LINUS then only 1 member of the family can be using other Fon routers at a time. (Currently this is not implemented and there is not a limit on how many people use the same user name at the same time)

Alien

This type of user does not own a fon router. Alien's pay $X.00 (USD) (daily/monthly/per byte) to surf on Bill's internet. Aliens pay W.00 (USD) (daily/monthly/per byte) to surf on Linus's internet. (Currently the prices are not set and alien's are not allowed to surf - everyone is a LINUS)

Bill

This type of user has a fon router and shares internet. Linus users surf for free on Bill's internet. Aliens pay $X.00 (USD) (daily/monthly/per byte) to surf on Bill's fon router. Bill makes $Y.00 (USD) per alien that signs up (or uses) Bill's internet. Bill's are not allowed to surf on other Bill's internet or Linus's internet without paying $Z.00 (USD) (daily/monthly/per byte). (Currently the prices are not set and Bills are not able to make money - everyone is a LINUS)

Criticism

FON introduces itself as a movement, which may lead to think that FON is a sort of user-based association when it is in fact a corporation.

FON works by charging Aliens a fee. Currently the only way to get around this is to share your local setting. (Each FON router has a local user account for their fon router so that family members can surf for free without logging in). Bills and Linuses doing this will have to deal with accusations when an Alien uses a connection for illegal purposes.

People already providing unencrypted WiFi internet access to their neighborhood would have to lock down their WiFi router to be part of the FON "movement".

Martin Varsavsky aims to "build a global standard to share WiFi" ([1]), which means he would like to have a monopoly in the market targeted by FON. He states that "FON is the P2P of WiFi" ([2]) when in fact his business model is quite different from user-based decentralized networks like eDonkey.

ISPs that allow FON service (by country)

ISPs that do NOT allow FON service (by country)

  • United States of America
    • Comcast (United States)
    • SBC DSL (United States)

External links

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