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FON – Fonera Round 2
by Andrew McCaskey
Is Fon Getting Traction ?
It seems that FON has been in play for at least a year, maybe 18 months. Is their access plan getting traction ? It’s one of those things that sounds like it ought to work, but you have to wonder if it’s in the cards. The technology is there, but the human behavior might not be.
Fon’s concept is that with a little bit of coordination between residential subscribers to internet access there could be benefits for all. By installing a special FON router, a member would dedicate a portion of their availalbe bandwidth to a public facing wifi access point, while preserving the bulk of the bandwidth for personal use. In return, the FON member gets free access to FON network sites wherever available.
It sounds like it should work – and with the alternative being some sort of $60 per month EVDO or tethered smartphone solution, it might not take many months to pay for the customized router. The problem is, however, the classic chicken and egg: It works only when there is a critical density of FON members to make the system work.
FON2 adds NAS storage and bittorrent capabiltiy to the FON router hardware, permitting the use of a $80 device (in addition to the wifi access point) as an always on cloud storage device and bittorrent receiver – thus getting some benefit of the downstream bandwidth while you are out of the house, without a dedicated box funning storage and downloads.
I see the problem as twofold. It’s interesting technically, but other than as a niche product, I dont’ see it. The NAS options available for free right now – like Evernote or Dropbox and the emerging systems such as PogoPlug are quickly taking up the storage portion of the problem. Free wifi (admittedly of widely varying reliability and quality) is gradually becoming available in most areas – and unless FON can develop some quality association to go along with it’s branding it’s going to be a longshot.
It’s just cool. Not cool enough to get excited about.
CES 2008 Coverage for Tech Podcast Network
FON2 and The Fonera Network
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