FON attempts to change the world of wi-fi
I heard about this a few weeks ago and think it’s an interesting approach to accelerating our entry into a wi-fi everywhere world. FON, a Spanish start-up, is out to sell you a $5 wi-fi router. If you share your network, you can use any other FON hotspot for free. It’s like a collective except that FON has a few crafty revenue models built in to ensure they make $$. They have some good marketing to build the hype as well: “Become a Fonero” is my favorite. They are calling their $5 router (really a linksys with custom firmware they are eating the cost of) a “social router”. Ha! Just remember to use protection 
Is this a great way to help wi-fi access explode everywhere or simply a large corporation trying to appear like a socially concious start-up doing good in the world? Hmm.
For the hackers out there, since the Linksys router runs Linux, people have already figured out what it does differently and how to work around it…gotta love the GPL.
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