[CWN-Summit] Experience being a Fonero?

[Ben West]

I am curious if anyone on this list has experience as a FONero, that is
with sharing bandwidth on Martin Varsavsky's global wifi enterprise FON
(http://en.fon.com/).

I am impressed by the number of people involved (84804 as of this
writing), along with their venture capital from Skype and Google.  I'm
also impressed that they're shipping wifi routers with their logo and
customized firmware.

I also notice how FON supporters tend to be adamant:
http://anina.typepad.com/anina/2006/06/from_beggar_to_.html
http://knaddison.com/category/fon
http://saltybeagle.com/?section=article&id=52
http://www.cs.joensuu.fi/~cislas/blog/?p=40
http://www.kimbach.org/2006/07/04/ive-become-a-fonero/

Just as FON's critics can be adamant, although they tend to focus on the
activities of Mr. Varsavsky:
http://tech.am/2006/08/01/my-last-day-as-a-fonero-bye-fon-hello-future/
http://wifinetnews.com/archives/006267.html

My initial interest in FON was its global coordination, i.e. sharing
your own wifi bandwidth gave you access to all FON hotspots worldwide,
and promised potential $$$ to go to your DSL bill.  I also like idea of
subsidized wifi routers, along with (somewhat customizable) captive
portal software.

I am, however, a bit leery of FON's centralized billing process
($3/day), since at 1st glance, it won't let you set up local exceptions.
 $3/day is already more expensive here than simply having your own
broadband connection at home.  Max $10/month, along with a streamlined
login process (or even connection caching) for existing DSL/wifi hotspot
owners would be far more reasonable in my area.

In addition, I see that FON tech support is frequently lagging, or
non-existent, tho I'm willing to be a local fonero tech support guy to
help compensate for this.

Finally, I see that FON tends to float in sketchy legal status with
ISPs, although much of that I'm willing to blame on staunch
unwillingness from ISPs (especially in the US) to permit customers to
share wifi.  The allowance to share DSL bandwidth, BTW, is one
compelling reason to use the Speakeasy ISP in the US.

Could anyone share their thoughts on FON?

-- 
Ben West
westbywest at riseup.net