The joy of sharing

A Spanish wireless Internet company took to heart mom’s advice about sharing.

The founders of Fon, a for-profit company with about 100,000 users worldwide, call it wireless social networking. It’s an intriguing business based on folks agreeing to share their broadband wireless networks with like-minded others.

This isn’t the first such plan, but it’s one of the faster-growing recent versions of the idea of giving free access and then getting the same from other members.

The basics are at www.fon.com, where you can read about the company’s mission, plus find maps of Fon members who’ve signed up and are offering Wi-Fi access.

Once they’ve installed a special Fon router, those members are called by the company “Foneros” – people who are willing to share with other Foneros.

“It works on a social sharing idea,” said Juergen Urbanski, Fon’s North American general manager, based in San Francisco.

It also works simply. You buy a Fon router for $5 and roughly $8 in shipping. You set it up in your home or business, and it acts just like any other encrypted, secure Wi-Fi network.

But the router also issues a second ID signal, which identifies that it’s available to other Foneros. A Fonero who’s searching for a Wi-Fi signal and who finds your Fon signal can then log on, using his or her Fon user name and password.

It’s free to all visiting Foneros, provided they’re registered members and are also free providers.

“If you open your hot spot at home, in exchange you can surf the world for free wherever you go,” said Urbanski.

Founded in Europe, Fon has been a modest success in urban centers like Paris, Berlin and London. Urbanski said the company also has had strong growth in broadband-rich Japan, Hong Kong and Taiwan.

Across the United States, Fon’s penetration is still low. Manhattan has a fair number of members. In Eastern Washington, a few Fon routers can be spotted around Spokane, the Tri-Cities and near the Idaho border.

It’s a business aimed at ordinary travelers who simply want a free connection and don’t want to worry about setting up accounts at hotels, airports or in Starbucks, said Urbanski.

Projections show that Wi-Fi will continue being a primary method for consumer and business communications. “Within two years it’s predicted there will be more than 100 million devices – and that doesn’t count PCs – that will have Wi-Fi as a primary means of connecting to the Internet,” said Urbanski. Those will include portable game consoles, smart phones and whatever else comes along, he said.

Urbanski said Fon’s main source of revenue will come from Foneros who offer Wi-Fi access to “aliens” – the Fon term for non-members who want to pay for access while roaming in a Fon neighborhood. It’s expected that most of those offerings will come from businesses.

Fon would split the revenue with the vendor advertising its Wi-Fi hot spot, he said. Initial fees are about $3 a day for 24-hour access.

That intended commercial use has engendered some legal tangles, however. Some broadband providers have begun notifying the company that Fon members who are selling their network access are potentially breaking their end-user agreements.

Urbanski said Fon has already arranged agreements in Europe to avoid that legal hassle, and it’s doing the same with providers in this country. One solution is a splitting of revenue between Fon, the Fonero and the broadband provider.