by Cyrus Farivar
A new service could allow you to share your home internet connection and, in exchange, surf the web for free while on the road.
A Spanish company called Fon (pronounced like “phone”) has devised a new way to provide Wi-Fi to local areas. The company announced earlier this week that it was able to obtain nearly $22 million in funding from Silicon Valley juggernauts including Sequoia Capital, Google and Skype.
The company plans to provide three levels of service. The top level, called “Linus” — named for Linus Torvalds, the father of Linux — allows those who share their home internet connections to receive free access to other Fon internet hubs around the world. Those net access points are made available by other Fon users who share their connections. Currently, according to Ejovi Nuwere, Fon’s U.S. general manager, there are approximately 9,000 worldwide Fon users, all of whom are Linuses.
“Everyone is paying for internet access at home and when they’re traveling they’re paying for internet access on the road,” Nuwere said. “We think that if you pay $40 a month for internet at home that you should have internet access wherever you go. One of the things that we want to do is to bring the public internet to the public.”
