FON, a Spanish start-up on an ambitious crusade to turn home Wi-Fi connections into wireless “hotspots” for nearby users, is set to unveil on Monday a plan to hand out 1 million wireless routers for just $5 apiece.
FON, which aims to create a network of home users and small businesses to resell wireless access to passersby, said on Sunday it will subsidize $60 Cisco (Nasdaq:CSCO – news) Linksys or Buffalo routers for $5 in the United States or 5 euros in Europe.
Routers are small boxes users connect to cable or telephone Internet connections to broadcast wireless signals to nearby devices, inside a home, business or surrounding neighborhood.
Juergen Urbanski, North American general manager, said FON, which in February raised $21.7 million from backers including the founders of Google (Nasdaq:GOOG – news) and Skype, is looking to turn the brand-name equipment into what it calls “social routers.”
Well what theyre saying is that if you agree to share your bandwidth using this specially configure router you can get for 5 bucks you are then able to log on to this wi-fi network anywhere in the world that people have these routers up and running…..people dont usually “share” straight up I mean who would just leave their router out there for anyone to log on?
It’s hard to understand and I really don’t see the point of this. Sharing access is already being done informally everywhere and to me it sounds like another attempt to monetize something that could be free like Starbucks does with access in the USA.