$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

Co-oping Internet networks the capitalist way

[dada21]

This is a great idea, and one I think will gain a lot of strength as information providers find ways to subsidize lower-cost connections to their services (especially Google). I already co-op with a half dozen of my neighbors to share our Internet bandwidth through WiFi. I don't charge for access, the router is open to all, but it does have a landing page that requests that they pay for what they use. So far our bill is paid about 8 months into the future.

In our neighborhood we already have 4 high speed internet providers, so competition is fierce but pricing is still fairly high due to local government idiocy (they want all the providers to pay a fee to be allowed to serve the area). We even have 2 medium-speed wireless providers who serve our area too, but they're also a bit expensive due to the village fees (how would the village stop them, though?)

This is the right step in the direction of providing inexpensive or free bandwidth to everyone. We don't need cities or governments paying for it, we just need the end profit-makers to subsidize the initial cost. Our connection should happily support 50 households (or more) for basic Internet usage, and if they want to use higher speed services, they're more than free to select from one of the providers available. For more, paying $5 a month for a decent 6 Mbps connection is well worth it, even if we frown on Bittorrent or other massive leach programs.

I've already talked to 3 other people in my neighborhood who are interested in doing the same thing. The plus side is that we communicate better (through a private forum) with each other than I've ever seen in a neighborhood I've lived in. We talk about security issues, odd cars on the streets, and all sorts of issue that people used to think we needed government for.

I really support these systems and would love to know if there is a way to privately sponsor some of these routers so that they're free, or even sponsor the bandwidth charges of people who offer this service to others through their own connection. Anyone know?

Re:So what?

[Doctor Memory]

You're missing the Big Picture: once there is a nationwide mesh network of these things, Google will light up their dark fiber backbone and link all of these babies up. Then, with their bandwith needs met, they'll drop their backbone connections and watch as AT&T et. al. flounder helplessly trying to flog their now-hopelessly-overprovisioned goods. Their share prices tank, executives commit suicide, then Google and Amazon swoop in and pick up the remains at fire-sale prices. They then shift back to the more-reliable landlines, but the routers remain, silently blinking, waiting for the next command from the Googleplex...

MAN, this is good coffee!