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September 19, 2006

Fon Offers Own $5/€5 Router

By Glenn Fleishman

The folks at Fon add prefab La Fonera to their line-up: The company is selling a concept, not hardware, but hardware helps enable the concept. Fon wants millions of people to become Foneros, sticking a Fon-enabled Wi-Fi gateway on their separately purchased DSL or other Internet pipe, and then allow other Foneros and non-Foneros access. This process is accelerated by partnering with ISPs, who think they will sell more connections with Fon-enabled routers hanging off the end, and by making it simple to get a Fon-enabled router.

While you can flash relatively inexpensive hardware with Fon’s modification and extension of DD-WRT, La Fonera is ready to go. At $5 or €5 (one per registered Fonero on their first purchase), it’s an awfully good deal. The device offers two virtual SSIDs so that you can have both a private and public network with separate parameters on each.

Foneros who choose to share their connection at no cost with other active Foneros can, in turn, use other Foneros’ connections for free. All others pay a small daily fee which is designed to be useful as a day rate, but not be cheap enough to be an alternative to paying a separate monthly fee. [link via GigaOm]

Posted by Glennf at September 19, 2006 10:26 AM

Categories: Hardware, Hot Spot

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