Thursday, February 22, 2007

Fon wants you to help steal business from Starbucks and T-Mobile


Oh tricky, sneaky Fon. Fresh off their 10,000 Fonero giveaway, they're stepping up the ante with how they give away their loss-leader routers. Their newest campaign is sure to strike a chord with armchair entrepreneurs and Adbusters fans alike: if you live within the immediate vicinity of a Starbucks (read: WiFi range), Fon would like to send you one of their Foneros. Why? Because, if you recall, when you allow users to connect with your internet connection over your Fonero, Fon splits the profit with you -- $1 for every user (who pays $2 to use your connection). So for every $10 T-Mobile / Starbucks WiFi user you swipe, Fon gives you a buck; now, granted this still isn't a scheme for those paranoid about home network security, bandwidth usage, or nefarious hax0rs type with a spoofed MAC and a keen eye for easy hotspot access, but who knows, for those near Starbucks (yes, they'll be checking against known locations) it might even be worth it to buy a budget DSL line just to profit with Fon.

1 comment:

Djbouti said...

Hey it's Alicia from FON here. I thought you might be interested hearing about the Fonbucks campaign success:

FON ended up giving away just under 7000 routers; 5,000 more than they anticipated. And these Foneros don’t lie! Fon saw a huge increase of Fon hotspots in highly dense, Starbucks populated areas.

Fon’s been having a lot of fun with this campaign. Check out the latest fun with Starbucks and meet Fon’s new favorite matador (Joselito):

http://youtube.com/watch?v=syNeaVewv5o

Comments welcome!”