Share

Tweet

In April I gave away a Fon Router (Roland was the lucky winner) because Fon sent me by mistake 2 with the order of the SMC Wifi Phone (which I hate). To be honest I never ever played around with Fon and I must saw I was not really interested in sharing my Wifi connection. But all changed with our plans to move to Valencia. We are going to be apartment hunting and I was worried on how to get my creedy Wifi Antenna on some free HotSpot. Well, I remember Fon, they are Spanish company and I figured they are going to have a lot of users down there. They do!

Becoming a member is completely free, but to share your wifi you need to use their Router (Fonera):

You can either buy it on their site ($39.95) or look for it on Ebay for a cheaper price.

Optionally you can add the Fontenna which let’s you increase your signal by 5 times (which can get important when you are trying to make a few bucks of it)

It’s only 2 bucks more when you but it together with the Fonera + (their newest router version)

Once you receive your router, you need to first sign up for a user account (make sure you you choose a "Bill User" and add your paypal account).

Then hook up your your fon router to your wifi (easy instructions) set up your router online buy playing a mark on their map and you are ready to go.

The first advantage is that from now on you can use any other Fon Hotspot worldwide… almost every city has tons of them:

It is easy to locate them with their Fon Map:

Manhattan will be totally covered soon. Just check out if there any fon spots near you .. you might be really surprised.

So how do you make money? Well, it’s pretty simple. Non Fon users can buy Day Passes for around 3 dollars and you will make 1 buck from it. That’s not much – but if you are in a busy area, close to a cafe (Starbucks) you could make easily 30 bucks a month which should cover your broadband.

An other way to make money is by personalizing your Router Start Page, which everyone will see when getting access to your fon spot. There you can run your google ads or link to other sites. This way you could easily promote your site and businesses. Especially if you run a small business.

Are you worried about people using your Wifi to do monkey business? Well people have to login to use that Fon Spot. So it is still secure and if someone does something shady it is traceable because every access gets a log entry. This way you can exactly see who used your wifi and when.

2 more tips: make sure you have a flatrate and if you don’t you can set the monthly bandwith fon router is allowed to use. Just to be save.

Fon gets from me a 3 thumbs up.

I just can’t stand Wifi spots charging (especially at airports). Let’s start covering the whole world with free Wifi. Let’s do it!

Link: Get started with FON here

Kids Link: Constructive Eating Tools