FON -Fonera 2.0n

What is FON

FON is the world’s largest WiFi community and the best way to get connected to the internet for free!

When you buy any Fonera (FON’s line of revolutionary WiFi routers) and connect it to your existing broadband connection, you create a FON Spot (a secure WiFi access point) that allows you to share your WiFi connection with other FON members.

The Fonera 2.0 series allows you to do even more with your WiFi. You can upload videos to YouTube, and photos to Facebook, Picasa or Flickr and download torrents or files, directly to or from an external hard disk...even when your computer is off!

FREE ACCESS TO WIFI WORLDWIDE

FON allows you to:

• Connect to WiFi at over a million free WiFi access points (Fon Spots) in the world’s largest WiFi Community
• Connect to WiFi at FON Partner hotspots in popular public locations

100% SECURE WIFI AT HOME

FON allows you to:

• Choose how much bandwidth you want to share
• Use and share your WiFi connection with the confidence that your signal is secure and your privacy is protected

MAKE MONEY

FON allows you to:

• Make money when you create a FON Spot and let others outside the FON Community buy access to the internet via your WiFi signal.

MUCH MORE THAN JUST WIFI: DOWNLOADING AND FREE INTERNET ACCESS

FON allows you to:

• Manage downloads and torrents automatically with Megaupload and Rapidshare
• Manage uploads remotely to Youtube, Picasa, Flickr or Facebook
• Check on your router’s recent activity via automatic status updates on Twitter.
• Wireless access to your external hard drive and to other USB devices like printers and webcams.
• Convert a 3G signal to a WiFi signal

• Add new applications with a simple click (a la iPhone)
• Create your own apps for the Fonera thanks to its Opensource (OpenWRT) platform
• Get more information about FON routers and all their awesome WiFi capabilities!

Source

Martin Varsavsky is a an Argentine/Spanish tech entrepreneur, teacher, philanthropist and founder of FON.
FON is the largest WiFi community in the world. FON brings you closer to free WiFi. Buy any FON WiFi router and become part of the Foneros (FON community) – now with over 1.5 million registered members and a growing list of Telco partners who add FON functionality to their ADSL modems. Google, eBay, British Telecom, Index Ventures and Sequoia Capital are investors in FON.FON’s vision is WiFi everywhere,WiFi for everyone.Share some of their home Internet connection and in return gain access to free WiFi worldwide. With FON at home you get free access to over half a million WiFi hotspots worldwide. It’s as simple as that.

FON´s first existence was about WiMAX not WiFi. But in 2004 it was too early for WiMAX and Martin moved on to the inmensely popular WiFi called Fonera and thanks to it and telco partners like BT,Neuf in France or Livedoor in Japan Martin built the largest WiFi network in the world.

British Telecom (BT) join together with FON to create BT FON which aims to give all its members access to wireless broadband wherever they are in the world.BT FON is the world’s l largest Wi-Fi community. There were over 100.000 hotspots in the UK andover 300.000 hotspots worldwide.

According to Martin,BT FON Community is the winner in the Most Innovative Wireless Broadband category at the Wireless Broadband Innovation Awards 2008.The WBI Awards is a global institution that recognizes leadership and the very best in innovation for Wireless Broadband.

In May 2008, Martin wrote an article about the WiMAX Fonera. In a couple of years FON would love to help its community members empowering them with not a WiFi but aWiMAX Fonera. The WiMAX fonera is just like a Fonera, meaning a wireless transmitter connected to DSL, fiber or cable, but it sends WiMAX. Martin admitted thathe has such prototype and boast that he could make them for $200 or less.

For rural areas WiMAX is fine with huge towers a la GSM but for urban areas the FON’s army of Foneros is a much more efficient way of distributing signal. Of course Foneros would want free services for them as donors but Martin believe WiMAX provider will be happy to have some customers use their services for free and save billions in infrastructure deployment.

In December 2008,Martin shared story about WiFi on the Go with GigaOM and he testified,“It´s paradoxical that FON started as a WiMAX company, failed and was reborn as a WiFi company”. WiMAX is the perennial future that never happens. WiFi grows and grows”.

In July 2009, instead of launch the WiMAX Fonera,FON introduced the Fonera 2.0n in the US