I bought a wireless router from start-up company Fon about a fortnight ago. Despite being warned it could take three weeks for it to arrive, it took 10 days.
Fon is being painted as a revolution in wireless Net access. Basically the company – which has received a fair big of backing from Google and Skype, among others – plans to blow apart the market being built and tightly controlled by traditional telcos – that of public wireless access.
I installed the router yesterday. And it works. Sort of.
Fon, as I understand it, has been knocked sideways by its own success. The press from Google and Skype getting on board has flooded the company with requests for its routers and so the company is working flat out to get those routers out into the real world – which, after all, is its main goal.
But the company is really suffering on other fronts and it really needs to pay attention to its service before the whole thing implodes. This was my experience:
All in a box
Router arrived, everything contained within it. I note that there is no more than a Fon sticker and some support numbers for Fon, so I use the Linksys manual enclosed to get the system up and running.
Now, I already had some experience no only with wireless routers but also with Linksys, and I am technically literate, so I was an easy customer.
Connect the router to my laptop with an Ethernet cable, connect the router to my modem, power it all up. Fine.
But when I try to talk to the router using the supplied IP address (http://198.168.1.1) in my browser – nothing. I unplug, re-attach, power down and up – same problem. I check all the documentation – nothing.
So I disconnect it all, connect to the Net as per normal and go to Fon's website. I scour the support Boards and discover other people have had the same problem.
Management issues
Because I have a Fon-enabled router, they have already configured it. And Fon's management console is actually at http://198.168.10.1. It also has a different IP address for managing the wireless part of the system – http://192.168.182.1.
Fon's system works by separating the router into connected and wireless partitions. The connected part i.e. you with your physical Ethernet cables attached, is left free and untouched. The wireless part has Fon's software running on it and provides security, authentication and so on.
These two parts are managed through a slightly clunky management system found at the two IP addresses above. One manages the connected part; one the wireless part.
Now these address should *definitely* have been included on a bit of paper in the box because without them you can't do anything.
So I set it all up again and managed this time to talk to the router.
Then there was an issue with the username/password. I typed in a password and hit return but was told it was no good (need combination of upper and lowercase). Then I noticed what the standard passwords were and entered them. But it didn't accept them.
Anyway, it's a bug because while it said my password was no good, it had in fact taken that to be the password.
It was the first of a number of bugs that Fon is going to have to iron out very soon if it expects Average Joe to sign up to it.
No speako the lingo
There is also an issue with language. The company was originally Spanish and has been translated into English but there are still part of its system that appears in Spanish, such as all the countries for registration are in Spanish.
I have also tried to register my access point but can't seem to find a way to do so. I am assuming since it was sent to my address that Fon is going to enter it.
But the biggest problems are in actual usage. I cannot access my own wireless point using my Fon username and password. It doesn't work. I can access it using the local username and password I have added manually to the system, but I'm not sure any Fonero will be able – somewhat undermining its whole purpose.
I am not sure where it has fallen down here: has Fon not updated its servers with new members? Are its servers down? Does it need to have my access point registered? Is it registered?
Another problem is that since it is overwhelmed, Fon staff aren't responding to message on its support boards – which is incredibly stupid as that is exactly where its customers are going. It needs to update its FAQ massively and stick some technical staff on its support boards immediately.
Lost without a map
The other big problem is maps of other Fon wireless points. There are only two at the moment – Spain and the US – and not only are they hopelessly out of date that are also using Google's positioning system and, as such, aren't great. The map for the UK is coming soon, I am told, but at the moment – nothing.
Now, I understand that the people at Fon are probably killing themselves working but what they simply have to do is take a day out, get all their management together and appoint a project manager to discover the problems and sort them out.
I am still holding out hope, but not being able to log into my own access point using my Fon username is not encouraging. And unless the company prepares itself far better for less technical users than me, it is going to fall at the first hurdle.
[Addition: Oh, I forgot. The router also came with a European-style two-pin plug. I wasn't worried since I have a UK-plug power adaptor for the self-same Linksys router. Except, for some reason the router hates the power from this lead; the power light flickers and the routers simply doesn't work. So I've had to use one of my two-to-three-pin adaptors and plug the supplied cable in. This is extremely bulky and a bit fragile. And, of course, will massively annoy any consumers with UK-style plugs – and that is a pretty big chunk of the world.]
The market
If you're interested, here is a bit I wrote about the Wi-Fi hotspot market the mo, and the issues surrounding it:
Anyone that has tried to use a public hotspot will most likely be aware that it is exhorbitantly expensive. BT and T-Mobile control most of the hotspots in the UK and charge a ridiculous £6 an hour.
When it costs only £20 a month to have a high-speed DSL connection, it is clear that the economics have got screwed up somewhere along the line. Those economics are pretty simple. It costs a lot of money to install tens of thousands of public hotspots, plug each into a high-speed Net connection, maintain that connection, and build a system behind it all which lets people buy access at any time, seamlessly.
But it isn't *that* expensive.
Because of a limited number of hotspots, the companies that have installed them are running a high-cost oligopoly, with price way above cost price.
So, why hasn't a company with big investment walked in, put out low-cost wireless Net access and stolen the market?
Well, there have a large number of community wireless zones, people using meshing technology to link together their wireless networks, but the problem with this is that it is small, requires large amounts of local co-operation and it requires technical know-how across the board.
This is fine for small villages, but a national system requires a huge network and an instantly recognisable name. A Google, Skype, eBay, Amazon of Wi-Fi.
Why hasn't it arrived?
Because of the telcos' installed bases. As soon as there is a viable competitor in the market charging less for Net access, BT and T-Mobile will simply reduce their prices. Their trusted, famous names, combined with huge marketing clout, deep pockets, PR people, lawyers, and so on will mean no company stands a chance.
It's made harder by these companies cutting deals with shop chains, pub chains and so on for exclusive access to their public-facing premises. As such, the locations available for a new company are also curtailed. And the giants can simply decide that they won't allow customers of Company A to access their hotspots.
If you sign up with a company to give you wireless Net access, you are going to be annoyed if you can't get it, yet another company in the same area will give you it.
And – and this is very significant – the simple fact is that at the moment there aren't that many people trying to access the Net wirelessly either through their laptop or PDA or phone or whatever. As such there isn't such an enormous market that people are willing to take the risks of taking on multi-billion-pound companies.
That is soon going to change however.
With Wi-Fi chips being inserted in a new generation of consumer goods as standard. Within just two years the number of people willing and able to use Wi-Fi while out and about will be in the hundreds of thousands. The telcos know this and so are attempting to control the market and expand as fast as they can into it so they can benefit the most when it happens.
The one weak spot in this domination plan, combined with market control and price rip-off, is all the shops and public locations that want to offer Net access as a way of attracting customers. The big telcos are too big and cumbersome to get at small businesses – they make deals with big chains, and that's it.
So what the big telcos have done to prevent a grassroots revolution from occurring is push this decade's speciality: fear.
Fear, that is, of the Internet.
What might happen if you run an Internet connection without proper protection. There are viruses, and hackers, and worms, and pornography! This danger element is constantly pushed, and then offered free with the set-up that the company installs alongside its payment system.
Just leave it to BT or T-Mobile or whoever, and all you're problems will be solved. To a coffee shop owner, this makes perfect sense – let someone else deal with all these problems, while also offer Net access to your customers. And so another controlled and expensive hotspots is added to the network and the power of the big telcos have just grown bigger.
But, but, but, but, but.
Here's comes Fon which offers this whole service. It's a small company, it has backing from Google and Skype, and it offers you the chance to offer free wireless access to other Fon users, or to charge for access (but far, far less than the others).
The idea is to use the Internet's own intrinsic strength – everyday people – to build a monster network.
In the same way that eBay is an enormous success because it enables people to interact with one another directly, with safety created a third party, so Fon does the same for wireless access – misses out the middleman, and his fat profits.
The logic is simple – supply room on your wireless network for others, and others will provide it for you.
How Fon works is simple: it provides security at the wireless end. So you have to be signed up with Fon to get access to the network. Registration is free and simple. So the security element is provided by a third-party and you can to offer and benefit from the system.
You can download Fon's software from its website, install it on your network and off you go. Or you can buy a Fon-enabled wireless router direct from Fon and just plug it in.
The reason I came across Fon was because my wireless router died on me, so I decided to buy one Fon-enabled from the company. I installed it yesterday.
