inbabble.com

FON, the Spanish-based WiFi network, has now given away 7,000 free routers to people in range of a US Starbucks, making it possible for them to compete directly with T-Mobile’s WiFi service at Starbucks Coffee Company. That’s 5,000 more routers than it planned on giving away when the “Fonbucks” campaign began in February. FON charges US$2 a day to access their network, while T-Mobile charges US$10. Which choice would you like with your latte? FON wants to aggressively expand in high-density areas, which happens to be a strategy of Starbucks as well.

FON, with the help of Google, Skype and Time Warner, now has over 70,000 WiFi hotspots throughout the US alone, the country where it is growing the fastest. The free router campaign wasn’t really aimed solely at Starbucks. FON says “any cafe, coffee shop, restaurant or other public venue” was eligible for a free router. When I clicked on the free router promotion link, I got the message “Invalid promotional code”, so the promotion seems to be over. But you can still buy a La Fonera router for US$39.95, and become a “Bill” or a “Linus”.

In the FON ecosystem, Bills, who are named after a certain famous software entrepreneur, earn US$1 whenever someone logs onto the network through their router. Linuses, like their open-source software namesake, don’t charge anyone who uses their FON service and they don’t need to pay anyone else to use theirs (including Bills). Even if you’re not a Bill or a Linus, you can use Fonero’s network if you pay US$2 a day through Paypal. If you do, FON calls you an Alien. In case you were wondering, FON uses Ubuntu Linux instead of Microsoft Windows.

The real effect of the campaign on T-Mobile’s business is unknown. Tech Evangelist asks if there were any coffee shops left that didn’t already offer free WiFi. Starbucks merely said that more WiFi hotspots is “a good thing“. T-Mobile never made any public comments about the campaign. Rumor has it that their contract with Starbucks will be up for renewal in the next few years, and maybe next time Starbucks will be signing with a certain Spanish WiFi company. Meanwhile, T-Mobile still offers WiFi service at thousands of Starbucks locations. But now, so does FON.

Michael M.