Router is just $5, but you have to share WiFi

A Spanish Internet company is selling a million wireless Internet routers for just $5 each. But there's a catch: Buyers must share their wireless Internet connections with their friends, neighbors, or even total strangers. It's all part of a daring plan to create a nationwide WiFi network on the cheap.

``I think it's an idea whose time has come," said Juergen Urbanski, North American general manager of FON Technology S.L., of Madrid.

Today, finding WiFi access is a hit-or-miss affair. Starbucks coffee shops and McDonald's restaurants offer fee-based WiFi connections, and a growing number of cities are building municipal networks. Urbanski wants to recruit millions of ordinary people who would make WiFi available to anyone within range of the wireless routers in their homes.

People who join FON (pronounced ``phone") are eligible to purchase a new wireless router for $5, plus an $8 shipping fee. This router is programmed with software that lets other FON members connect to the router for free Internet access. The router also protects the owner's privacy by blocking access to any other data on his home computer network. If enough people join FON, they'll create a nationwide WiFi network, with free service to all FON members. The FON website features frequently updated maps showing where FON service is available.

FON will make money by charging nonmembers about $3 a day for access to the network. Half of this money goes to the FON member whose router is being used.

FON has already signed up over 60,000 users, including about 10,000 in the United States. But since standard WiFi routers have a very short range -- less than 300 feet -- the company must deploy millions of routers to create a truly comprehensive network.

The company figures that handing out a million cheap routers -- half of them in the United States -- will immediately give it good coverage of major metropolitan centers on both continents.

FON has raised about $22 million from some powerful backers, including the respected venture capital company Sequoia Capital LLC, search titan Google, and the Internet telephony company Skype, now owned by eBay.

But Jean Kaplan, WiFi analyst at IDC Corp. in Framingham, is skeptical about whether the company's business model will work in the United States, where free and low-cost WiFi is not hard to find.

FON must also win over the major Internet service providers, or ISPs. These companies often explicitly ban customers from reselling their residential broadband service. But Urbanski thinks the broadband providers are having a change of heart. ``We actually have been approached by many of the top five ISPs in the United States," he said. ``They're very interested in partnering with FON."

Phil Santoro, a spokesman for broadband provider Verizon Communications, refused to confirm or deny there are any discussions between Verizon's broadband executives and FON. Santoro said Verizon's terms of service forbid customers from reselling residential broadband service.

But, he added, the company doesn't interfere with customers who program their routers to allow others to use their Internet connection.

``That's between you and your neighbor," Santoro said.

A spokeswoman for Comcast Corp., another major provider of residential broadband services, said her company was studying FON's plan and had not taken a position on it.

Hiawatha Bray can be reached at bray@globe.com.