I Am now officially a Fonero
Kim Schulz, friday d. 17. november 2006
FON is the largest WiFi community in the world. Our members share their wireless Internet access at home and, in return, enjoy free WiFi wherever they find another Fonero’s Access Point.
-- from en.fon.com
A couple of weeks ago I came by fon.com which is a large WiFi community on the net. I found the ideaology behind their community very appealing and immedialy ordered a La Fonera (their sweet little wireless router). Back then the price for such one was merely 5euro+shipping (total around 15euro) which is dirt-cheap for a router like this.
Found out that the day after I ordered it, they raised the price to 29euro+shipping.
Well today the router arrived with TNT and I was like a small child opening the first christmas gift. The design is very wife friendly (yep, just tested it on her) and with dimensions like 9x2.5x7cm it fits in everywhere.
The router comes with two SIDs such that you can split the network into two parts - a personal for you and your family, and a public for all the other Foneros. You can control more or less everything via a webinterface and you can even monitor who's using it directly via the Fon homepage.
So what is the idea with this community? Boiled down to one sentence it could be:
+"iIf you share you internet connection with me, I share mine with you." -i
You can share your Wifi on two levels.
- fully open for others - then you are a Linus.
- people need to pay for using your internet - then you are a Bill.
If you are a Linus, then you will have full access to all fonero's Wifi for free all over the world which is nice if you travel a lot and dont want to waste money on internet cafe's. If you on the other hand want to earn some fast money and dont think that you will use internet in other places, then you should be a Bill. A Bill has to pay for internet access when using other Fonero's Wifi, but you will then also earn something (hopefully) by letting others use your net.
I will probably start out by being a Linus since I dont mind sharing and would love to have the free internet when on the road. If it, on the other hand, takes too much of my internet connection, then I will probably turn into an evil Bill and make some money of it. But we'll see.
You can see a map of where you can find Foneros in the world here maps.fon.com.
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