$5 Social Wi-Fi Router

slashjunkie writes "BBC News is running a story about the Spanish firm Fon, selling subsidized Linksys WRT54GL Wi-Fi routers for $5, in exchange for the buyer agreeing to a 12 month contract of providing access to other Fon users within range. With the financial backing of Google and Skype, their goal is to create Wi-Fi networks, street by street, across Europe and the US. Buyers of the subsidized routers can classify themselves as 'Linuses', whereby they also get free access to all other Fon hotspots, or 'Bills', where they receive 50% of the revenue made by on-selling their Wi-Fi to other Fon users. 'Alien' users can buy 24-hour passes for 3 Euro. To deter misuse, all Fon users must identify themselves by a username and password before they can access the hotspot. As long as the owner's personal LAN is not accessible, this could be a good way to offset the costs of the average geek's bandwidth bill."

Comments

I'll take one

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll take one and be glad to share. Given that the house sits 700 feet from the nearest road and 5 miles from the nearest town, it might not help the cause much, but what the heck.

Linuses and Bills

[should_be_linear]

TFA forgets to mention that besides "Linuses" and "Bills" there are also "Jobs" users that have same connection speed like users above, but opted to pay twice as much.

Re:Linuses and Bills

[ettlz]

• Richards allow you to subroute the connection even further, provided you do so in a manner not more restrictive than the one in which you connect;
• Darls decide that they, in fact, own their next-door neighbour's connection and sue for it;
• Theos provide a secure, audited connection, don't give a damn what you do with it, and jump down your throat if you can't work out how to use it, dumbass; and
• Steves look at you sitting near their router, throw a chair out of the window, and threaten to fucking kill you.

Your target

[truthsearch]

The WRT54GL is in the mail. Your target is Steve Ballmer. Now GO!

Re:Your target

[bcat24]

Somewhere off in Redmond, a shot is fired. It narrowly misses Steve Ballmer, who grabs a chair to deflect it.
What will happen? Will bcat go down in legend as the glorious killer of Ballmer? Or will he suffer the wrath of Ballmer's WWE-style chair-throwing moves?
Will Steve f***ing kill Google? And most importantly, will bcat brick his new WRT54GL when he tries to reflash it?

Tune in next week, same bat time, same bat channel.

Linksys already doing this?

[noidentity]

"[Fon's] goal is to create Wi-Fi networks, street by street, across Europe and the US"

Isn't a company called Linksys also doing something like this? They seem to have pretty good coverage these days, and they don't even require a login. I think they may be using a different network topology, though.

Ballmer bashing...

[CrimsonScythe]

Indeed. There's more Ballmer bashing than you can shake a chair at.