Joho the Blog
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November 16, 2006
Fon (Disclosure: I am on their board of advisors, a compensated position) and Skype are making available a combination of a Fon router (La Fonera—a nicely designed piece of hardware that automatically creates two networks, one public and one for your private use) and a wifi phone that lets you make Skype calls wherever you can find an open wifi signal. It's $159 (£99, €139), and it comes with a bunch of SkypeOut minutes for calling regular phones (as opposed to calling computers running Skype). Judging from the Skype accessories page, it looks like this combo is a big price break: A skype wifi phone by itself costs $219 (after a $30 rebate). You don't need the Fon router for the Skype phone to work, and it doesn't work only with Fon signals. It looks like the bundle is intended to encourage those of us who rely on open wifi signals to provide free wifi signals at home, which is more or less Fon's raison d'être. [Tags: skype fon wifi] Posted
by D. Weinberger at November 16, 2006 11:01 AM
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Comments
I tried Fon. Couldn't get the router to do what I needed it to do, even after haunting their support forums.
Posted by: scott | November 17, 2006 11:41 PM
Scott, although getting a Fon router to work shouldn't require this, if you send me a description of the problem (or post it here), I'll send it along...
Posted by: David Weinberger | November 18, 2006 10:08 AM
I really apprciate that, David. The truth is, I have to confess that in frustration I flashed the unit back to Linsys firmware and washed my hands of it. (I'm sure I'm violating seventeen different TOS agreements, not to mention state, federal and international laws.)
The problem is, I could not set up port forwarding for http and ssh to route directly to my server inside my apartment. The entire thing is chronicled here:
http://boards.fon.com/viewtopic.php?p=8087#8087
http://scottfeldstein.net/blog/?p=1366
http://scottfeldstein.net/blog/?p=1373
It would be such good karma for me and FON to resolve our differences. Anything you could do to help would be grand.
Posted by: scott | November 18, 2006 10:16 AM
This is a fantastic Skype.
Posted by: xakep | November 18, 2006 12:58 PM
Scott, by the way, the Fonera should work better than the linksys. It's definitely cooler, for what that's worth. It's a small wireless router designed by and for Fon that provides two simultaneous networks, one public (Fon) and one private (for you and your family).
Posted by: David Weinberger | November 18, 2006 09:39 PM