Comments on: Coping with FON-liness

By: WebWorkerDaily » Archive All You Can Surf UK: Pret A Manger Offers Free Wifi «

Tue, 30 Dec 2008 16:01:17 +0000

[...] the UK has seen the failure of a number of municipal wifi projects (and FON!), pressure from 3G and creative revenue streams may mean that free public wifi will be an [...]

By: FON Community hits 1 million member mark, one step closer to worldwide free WiFi network?

Thu, 11 Sep 2008 16:13:22 +0000

[...] blog comments and not responding to criticism about the security of the FON routers. Also check out this post on WebWorkerDaily about ‘coping with FON-liness’ for reference. I hope you like that post! The Next Web [...]

By: Jason

Jason — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 18:20:49 +0000

I stand corrected I must have received it in early 2006.

By: fonoverser

fonoverser — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 21:25:48 +0000

“play tricks with words or claim to offer features which only exist under absurd circumstances or after bizzarre interpretation of otherwise common words. I have not served as moderator of their discussion board for many months now.”, so by these words AustinTx declares as: “positive, truthful, thoughtful and independant of fanatacism.”

he doesn´t seem to realize his own absurdity…

By: john

john — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 22:25:53 +0000

If you lived in London you would find Fon everywhere??! who do you think you are kidding? I have yet to find one single Fon or Btfon hotspot in london! i’ve given up as well, and my fonera is packed away in a drawer, it was a waste of energy. Most of my friends have turned off theirs as well. If after 3 years they have less than one hundred thousand fon active hotspots, as their maps say, things are going reeeeally bad.

It is a pity, i was a huge Fon fan at the beginning, but things have changed lots and you are right, it is ridiculous the amount of non fon related things that the labs and CEO are doing, instead of worrying about how to improve services, coverage, fonera functionality, etc. Surely fon shareholders wont be too happy!

By: AustinTX

AustinTX — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 20:17:31 +0000

I’ve made 4,248 posts on boards.fon.com as of this moment, mostly positive, truthful, thoughtful and independant of fanatacism.

As for Whisher.com, it is a -free- solution to sharing -free- wifi safely which has no dependance on router model (or proprietary firmwere therin). Unlike Fon, they do not play tricks with words or claim to offer features which only exist under absurd circumstances or after bizzarre interpretation of otherwise common words. I have not served as moderator of their discussion board for many months now.

It is Fon which is antagonistic to Whisher, because Whisher was founded by some talented guys who severed their partnerships with Martin Varsavsky before Fon even got started. In retaliation, Martin helped other friends of his to launch a Whisher clone!

I don’t know who this “fonoverser” is, but he is advised to stick to facts, and abandon his trolling tactics and personal attacks.

By: fonoverser

fonoverser — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 18:05:42 +0000

regarding AustinTX: this guy has posted about 5.000 mostly negative postings in english fonboard. he seems to need help, really abandoned in the “lonelyness of a long distance poster”….. so, it would be better not to listen any longer to all his anti-FON tirades, cause he is a moderator of an antagonistic start-up, called whisher, and strongly seems to be influencened by these guys. whisher has made a turn-around of 180 degrees, concerning its business model… so it should be clear what the real motivations are…. and where the real motives may be found. its promising, that this guy disappears from FON…. and do no longer waste his energy….

By: fonoverser

fonoverser — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 17:55:39 +0000

@Jason, you are telling nonsense to the public. This FON thing started sending routers in II/2006. so tell us, how can you receive one, before starting sending out? *LOL*

By: Jason

Jason — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 21:45:42 +0000

While mine has been deactivated for a while (I believe I actually received it in 2004 or 2005) I never had a single person login to it. I’ve since re purposed the router (back then they were sending out the WRT54GS routers with their own build loaded) and loaded up Tomato on it. Unfortunately it won’t keep up with a 15Mb down 2Mb up connection. So off to eBay it goes.

If you look at the map of locations and look at San Francisco then you’ll see lots of penetration. Hotspots everywhere.

I think if they want to stick around they need to keep the free routers sent to those that have a spot where people will use it and not all the citys out in the middle of tim buck two.

By: AustinTX

AustinTX — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 21:32:07 +0000

For example, my own Linksys Fon router has been turned off (repurposed) for almost exactly a year now. It’s icon still appears on the Fon Map, and it’s address is in the POI file download. Others have complained that theirs remained on the map for far longer.