Does anyone here use FON?

gjchester

I was a Fon-ero, I had the original mod'd Linksyss router and a Fonera 1 both from Fon.

I'm now no longer a member, or rather my routers are reflashed but you can't really de-register. Why you may ask?

Originally the premise was simple, I share my wi-fi, you share yours. Simple. I had a few visitors not enough to make any money but a few. I think I found another fon spot once.

The coverage is not as good as the maps suggest, a lot of the hotspots are in peoples homes (as you expect) so not hugely useful most of the time. On a break in Barcelona I never found a spot I could use. My Mum and Mum in law both have Fon Spots nearbuy but I've never seen them on the PC. My own hotspot is still listed as active, even though it's been off at least a year and a half (and I've moved house!!)

We went to Janpan where there is a tie up with Livedoor networks, and despite the electronics crazyness of Japan I never found a Fon spot there.

The the BTFon initative started, (I'm on Cable) every BTBroadband user gets a fon useage credit, and every homehub became a FON hotspot, however whats not so obvious is when they did that the homehub was only free on the expensive option 3 tarrif, if you had option 1 or 2 it was an expensive buy. Many people jsut biught a dlink/netgear/linksys box. That meant they got to use my Wifi I could not use there. It was never about money per se, but the fact I was expected to give my wifi to somewho who did not have to share in return, and if I wanted to use a BT openzone spot I still had to pay was almost the last straw.

What finally made me re-flash the routers was the fact that the tie up with BT means you have to buy the fonera at a set price, there were a few promos for a discount but BT stopped them. The BT homehub was alway expensive, so most people bought a cheaper router, by making the fonero promotions unavailable in the UK it effectivly meant I had less chance of finding a spot, and that was that.

Sorry I've gone on a bit. I still think it's great idea, but since BT joined it's fine for BT customers but not for others.

weevil_

Hmm, still thinking about switching to BT then and get their expensive option. There are both Openzone and FON spots at my Mum's when I visit which can't be any worse than mobile broadband.

kwikbreaks

My Fonera+ arrived. I got £14.40 OpenZone credit as well as the permanent Fon hotspot access.

My daughter has already found it handy - she has no landline or broadband yet but there is a usable BTFon hotspot within range of her house which she can use with my login.

Nobody apart from me has used my hotspot yet - it has an outside antenna so may get the odd visit.

weevil_

kwikbreaks wrote: »

My Fonera+ arrived. I got £14.40 OpenZone credit as well as the permanent Fon hotspot access.

My daughter has already found it handy - she has no landline or broadband yet but there is a usable BTFon hotspot within range of her house which she can use with my login.

I was hoping you would update when it arrived, I think I'm going to order the Fonera+ as well as I already know I can pick up FON signals at my Mum's house. I don't know how good they'll be but they always show up on both my laptop and phone.

Has your daughter commented on the speed? Especially compared to mobile broadband if she has ever used that?

You say you get a free pass before it arrives? So if I order it before I move and am lucky enough to have hotspots around the new place then I can use them before my broadband is connected?

kwikbreaks

I haven't discussed it with my daughter - she just sent me a text to say it was working for her. Don't expect fast though - the docs say that the genuine BTFON ones (which will be most) are limited to 512kbps. I'm not sure if that is correct though as the site you control your AP from is btfon.com and it has a speed slider where you set the maximum speed allowed on the public connection. I did a quicky speedtest and mine runs faster than 512kbps but the BT ones may not.

Prices seem to be quoted differently in different places too. I paid £29 with an offer of free post from the FON website and it was shipped from Spain. On the public landing page (which is a bt domain) it is quoted at ~ £37 - that may include post. Plus I think I saw it somewhere else at ~ £24 - all very confusing.

What will limit the usability is that most are going to be located in somebodies house with no regard given to producing a decent outside range. That means you'll need to be quite close to them to use them at all and often they'll be a weak signal which will limit speed.

I had hoped to be able to integrate it with my network better too - by default it is running on a different subnet and DHCP is either on or off - you cant limit the IP range used so changing it to use the addressing range of my main network could well cause issues. I've just left it to the defaults which means I can't access my main network even using the private SSID - it's no real big deal but they could have been smarter with the firmware to allow it to run as a proper WiFi extender.