I found Fon’s idea pretty interesting. If you are an internet addict, like me, you certainly experienced the situation of being on the move and having the desperate need of being connected. WiFi penetration is growing enormously but most of the waves out there are coins-operated: you pay for some airminutes.

Fon’s idea is simple: why should you pay if you have already a connection that you pay at home? Well, the point is that you cannot bring your router around… but what if you share your connection with the community and as a member you get the same benefit: free connection?

Fon is actually that: you buy their router, which gives you a private channel and a public channel and as you put your WiFi router into service you get back a free access to all the others public nodes available round the world.

But how extensive is this coverage? I had a look around my region, Cossonay in Switzerland (population: 2696). I found three access points!

What’s next? Well social routing is nice and the size of the community is going to make its success. IMHO we can think about all sorts of services that develops like that. Connectivity is the first step but what if the available services were of different kind and location-based? Wisher is going in this direction.