FON is a wifi communty where members share part of their home wifi with other members, in exchange for the use of the home wifi of the other 300,000 global members. Your home broadband is split into a secure private access and public FON part.

I started doing research into availability and cost of wifi when I bought a netbook in February 2009. I want to be able to keep on top of emails and blog admin when I’m on the move. Of course a netbook is only useful if you can easily and cheaply get online.

I first heard about the FON wifi communty in the UK through my BT Broadband Option 1 package which gives me 250 minutes of wifi access either in a BT Openzone or a BT/FON hot spot. Now I could gain unlimited firee access to the FON network if I upgraded to BT Broadband Option 3 which costs around £9 a month more than my Option 1 package, However if I purchased a FON wifi router for £30 this would entitle me to unlimited free wifi at FON hotspots worldwide.

FON router by nightRPStar

I decided to fork out £30 in a FON router. It was quite hard to set up the FON router and now I have three wireless networks available, the BT home hub, the private “My Place” FON and the public FON.

You can search for FON hotspots online but I haven’t found the maps to be that accurate and it can be hard to find an operational FON hotspot. So far I’v e only looked for FON hotspots in the UK. I’ve spent quite a bit of time moving my car around outside a supposed FON hotspot trying to find a decent signal. Even once I’ve found a good signal I had messages such as access denied when I try to log on.

However for a £30 investment I still thought it was worth a try. I’m hoping that as the FON community grows and technology improves that it will become easier to locate and access the FON hotspots.

Have you used FON either through BT Broadband or as a member of the FON community? How do you find it?