Only the FON-ely...FON-liness Of The Long Distance Runner. Yes, I had a whole bank of puns to title this post. They’ll all aptly tragic in telling the tale of a promising piece of web worker infrastructure that has in essence become a network of very lonely and isolated hotspots…

I first came across FON at O’Reilly’s Emerging Telephony 2006 conference, as then company evangelist Ejovi Nuwere outlined a vision of a global wifi network built from the grassroots, owned and operated by its users. Ejovi explained that users installing a FON hotspot would be able to earn revenue from its use or, if they agreed to charge no access fee, use every other FON hotspot at no cost when travelling away from home.

A few months later I recieved a complimentary La Fonera router, becoming the 4089th ‘Fonero’ (currently there are 671’363 users). A few days ago, I switched off my La Fonera, packaging it for an eBay bidder that paid just $17. Now the thing is, none of those 671’362 other Fonero’s hotspots were in places I where I needed connectivity…

FON showed great promise, attacking the fragmented wifi hotspot market and placing pressure on 3G broadband providers by harnessing the energy of the very people that would benefit from its service. The promise of a disruptive user-owned global wifi network was a large part of the company’s marketing, playing on the iconography and language of revolution. With $22m in funding from Google, Skype and venture capitalists, the company seemed poised for success…so what went wrong?

• Mobile broadband providers have wised up with 3G plans and hardware available for as little as $20/month here in the UK. Also users have a plethora of reasonable HSDPA and Wifi options. Though, incidentally, O2 won’t be letting UK iPhone 3G users use their phones as modems to the 3G network!

• FON-liness! FON is not where you need it despite their partnerships with telcos and municipalities, I’ve yet to find a FON location when I needed one. Airports, railway stations, gas stations are well served by national wifi providers. These are the location owners FON needed to align with. I’m not going to need broadband parked up outside some guys house, but I’ll need it waiting for a train to London.

• Crazy ass distractions at FON labs with the development of Gmail uploaders, URL squeezers and Facebook status tools are an unneccessary waste of resources. 20% time is only valuable when the other 80% is making a real difference to the business. It also indicates to investors that the founders are bored with the core business of the company.

• Basic hardware has been a constant frustration for Foneros, with the inexpensive La Fonera lacking many features common to Linksys, Belkin and other cheap routers (like more than one port!). Indeed, FON missed a strategic blunder in failing to convince those very manufacturers to add FON-like capabilities to their products out of the box. It can be argued the FON’s firmware is its core asset and proliferating that – agnostic of hardware – was a keystone strategy.

In 2006, I argued that my employers, Orange UK, could partner with FON to create the world’s largest hotzone. My superiors convinced me that if Orange wanted to do that, they could simply upgrade the firmware of all their domestic hotspots – without FON. FON’s potential role as a organisation that could enable roaming between multiple wifi networks was sadly unexplored.

So sadly the promise of FON’s $5 wireless router and it’s community-grown network is almost irrelevant. However, Web workers have many more options available to them. Take my advice and eBay that La Fonera…I’ll be putting that $17 towards an Airport Extreme :)

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Why iPad 2 Will Lead Consumers Into the Post-PC Era
• 3 Trends Defining the Future of the Digital Home
• The Near-Term Evolution of Social Commerce

Cellular Options:

Mobile phone operators in the United States have been investing billions into building out their mobile broadband networks. Of the four major mobile carriers, three (Sprint/Nextel, Verizon and AT&T) provide high speed mobile broadband to their customers. The little brother of the bunch, T-Mobile, is still only delivering a slow EDGE network to subscribers but are rumored to be rolling out a 3G network soon.

AT&T has a 3G network that uses a technology called High-Speed Download Packet Access (HSDPA) that can support download speeds of 1.8-14.4 Mbit/s. Globally there are 102 HSDPA networks in 55 countries. In the United States, AT&T has rolled out HSDPA to most major metropolitan areas.

You can access HSDPA through specific handsets that support the technology or via USB/PCMCIA cards that plug right into your laptop. Note that not all AT&T handsets support HSDPA, particularly BlackBerrys and the ever-popular iPhone. Yet. These non-3G handsets utilize AT&T’s slower 2.5G EDGE network. HSDPA is quick and speedy, but you pay in lowered battery life.

The cost of 3G data access is in addition to whichever voice plan you have with AT&T, and varies depending on the device you have. To add data access on to your non-smartphone handset, AT&T charges start at $19.99 a month for MEDiaNet access. Data plans for smartphones (BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, etc.) start at around $30/month. To add a data plan for your laptop, you must subscribe to a DataConnect Plan starting at $60/month for 5GB of monthly bandwidth. To use DataConnect, you must have either a USB or PCMCIA data card.

Sprint and Verizon Wireless both support the same 3G networking protocol which is different than HDSPA. These two wireless carriers use a 3G technology called Evolution-Data Optimized or EVDO that comes in two flavors – the faster Rev A and the older Rev. 0. The speedier version (currently used by both Verizon and Sprint), can reach download speeds of up to 2.4MBit/s.

EVDO has been around longer in the US, and as result Verizon and Sprint have more handsets available that use this 3G technology. Also, the reach of Sprint’s and Verizon’s high-speed network is wider. Not only are major metropolitan areas well-covered by EVDO in the US, but access is also available in smaller communities.

Verizon’s data plan, BroadbandAccess, ranges in price from $40/month to $60/month. The less expensive plan allows you a measly 50MB of bandwidth. For the typical web worker, I would recommend the 5GB $60 plan. Sprint, on the other hand, has an unlimited data plan with no caps for $60/month. Alternatively, they feature a less expensive $40/month plan that caps you at 40MB/month.

Cricket (previously covered by WWD) is a low cost cellular service provider that is available in limited areas including Portland, Oregon, Central Texas, Denver, San Diego, and others. Cricket offers EV-DO rev. 0, which is slower than Sprint and Verizon’s EV-DO. However Cricket’s data plan is $35/month for unlimited data usage. If you’re looking for a lower priced option and can work with the slower speeds, Cricket is worth consideration.

If you’re looking to be able to use a broadband data plan for a few days, check out RovAir. They offer cards from AT&T, Sprint, and Verizon for daily rentals.

With these cellular providers, you must check their coverage maps on their respective websites to ensure you’ll have broadband access in your area. Just because you have a cellular signal on your phone does not mean you have 3G/EV-DO network connectivity in that area.

Wi-Fi Options:

If you need Wi-Fi for mobile connectivity, you can rely upon free Wi-Fi hotspots at coffee shops and the like, or pay a subscription fee. To find Wi-Fi hotspots, check out the resources we featured in a previous post.

JiWire is an excellent resource for finding Wi-Fi hotspots around the globe.  In addition to their website locator, the company features downloadable applications for Windows, iPhone, and Mac OS X that will make it easy to find a hotspot.

Are you willing to share a piece of your home Internet connection with others in exchange for access to additional hotspots while on the road?  Fon is a company that sells you a wireless router that will enable you to have a ‘private’ network which is for your own use, and a separate network for fellow Fon users.  Once you’re sharing your network, getting on other Fon wireless hotspots (which are available all around the globe) is free of charge.

For subscription services, there are three major players in the US: T-Mobile, AT&T and Boingo. T-Mobile’s Wi-Fi service is well established and available in many locations. In related news, recently it was announced that Starbucks would eventually ditch T-Mobile in favor of AT&T’s Wi-Fi. AT&T advertises 71,000 places to get online with their subscription service.

T-Mobile’s Wi-Fi service plans start at around $30/month. Please see their website for detailed information. AT&T offers their Wi-Fi subscriptions starting at $20/month for unlimited use. If you’re already an AT&T DSL customer, you get access to AT&T hotspots as a part of your monthly DSL rate. See AT&T’s website for additional program details.

If you’re traveling outside the United States or spend a lot of time in airports, you’re more likely to find access via Boingo Wireless than T-Mobile or AT&T.   Boingo plans start at $22/month for laptops and $8/month for smart phones that feature Wi-Fi capabilities.  With all plans, be sure to read the small print regarding roaming charges.

What method do you use to get online while on the road?

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• A 2011 Mobile Forecast
• Mobile Overview, Q2 2010