Asia

FON is a company that aims to make free Wi-Fi available around the world by building a grassroots network; by 2010 it hopes to have one million hotspots. The company was founded in Spain in February 2006 by Martin Varsavsky, a successful telecommunications entrepreneur. Shortly after, FON received funding from Google, Skype, and two well-know venture capital firms.

FON users agree to share one (home, business, etc.) internet connection, in exchange for free access to all other users’ connections around the world. This means that, while the cost of joining FON is free, users must pay for one local internet connection, and a FON router (about $50). The FON router helps make sharing an internet connection secure. Non-FON members can also connect to FON hotspots for a daily fee ($3), for which the FON member may receive 50% of net revenue.

While there has been concern that ISPs would forbid their users from using FON to share their connection, so far no ISP has publicly said they will penalize users for doing so. In fact, some ISPs, including Time Warner Cable, are partnering with FON.

Learn More:

FON
http://www.fon.com/en/

FON on del.icio.us and Wikipedia
http://del.icio.us/foneros
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FON

FON: Wi-Fi for Everyone. New Telephony. February 14, 2006.
http://www.newtelephony.com/news/62h14134813.html

Zuckerman, Ethan. FON, and why sharing WiFi’s a cool technology for Africa. February 5, 2006. http://ethanzuckerman.com/blog/?p=363

Wong, M., & Clement, A. (2007). Sharing Wireless Internet in Urban Neighborhoods. In Steinfeld, C., Pentland, B. T., Ackerman, M. & Contractor, N. (Eds.), Communities and Technologies 2007: Proceedings of the Third Communities and Technologies Conference. London: Springer-Verlag. www3.fis.utoronto.ca/iprp/cracin/publications/pdfs/WorkingPapers/CRACIN%20Working%20Paper%20No.%2019.pdf

Belson, K. (2006). What if They Built an Urban Wireless Network and Hardly Anyone Used It? New York Times. June 26, 2006. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/26/technology/26taipei.html?ex=1308974400...

Bleha, T.(2005). Down to the Wire. Foreign Affairs. May/June 2005. http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20050501faessay84311/thomas-bleha/down-to-...

Ismail, Sherille and Irene Wu (2007). Broadband Internet Access in OECD
Countries: A Comparative Analysis. FCC Staff Report of the Office of
Strategic Planning and Policy Analysis and International Bureau,
October 2003.
http://www.coe.montana.edu/ee/rwolff/ee543%20papers/fcc-broadband.pdf

Oram, Andy (2007). MuniWireless conference: city politicians need to
understand the lay of the LAN. O’Reilly Emerging Telephony, June 4,
2007.
http://www.oreillynet.com/etel/blog/2007/06/muniwireless_conference_city...

by Becca Vargo Daggett & Christopher Mitchell Telecommunications As Commons Initiative Institute for Local Self Reliance May 2007 This brief article takes a welcoming, but critical look at attorneys Jim Baller and Casey Lide's national proposal, "Eight Bold Steps to a National Broadband Strategy." This proposal encourages national discussion of the U.S. broadband problem, by suggesting the installment of a national task force that would develop national goals and the strategies to make these goals possible.

Salon: Why American Broadband is so Bad Compared to Broadband in the Leading Nations. Muniwireless.com, October 18, 2005. http://www.muniwireless.com/article/articleview/4871