Fon WiFi Hotspots Arrive In The US

Fon and AT&T announced a partnership back in September. At the time the talk was about how AT&T users traveling overseas would now have access to additional wireless hotspots, though, there was some chatter about this opening the door for US availability. With that in mind, Fon has announced the US availability beginning today.

Given this setup has previously been unavailable for those in the US, we suspect some may not be familiar with how it all works. The basics are as follows; users buy and set a Fon router up in their home. By doing this you agree to share that access with others. And in return, you can access other Fon routers while out and about.

The router will be available direct from Fon and also from Amazon. Those looking to make a purchase can expect to shell out $59 for the hardware. The positive side here, aside from the initial purchase price — there are no additional monthly service fees. With data plans having shifted from being unlimited in the US, setups like this could help to offset some of your usage.

Comcast recently began offering something similar. They opened up customer routers back in June, which meant Comcast customers were given a wide variety of available WiFi hotspots to use when out of the house. Comcast did this by offering new routers that have two SSID setups — one for public and one for private surfing.

While this sounds good for those in the US looking to get started with Fon, we have yet to hear anything in regards to how the availability will connect with AT&T. For now the AT&T and Fon partnership covers international roaming, though, this could potentially be a good setup for AT&T users if/when domestic partnership details are revealed.

VIA: GigaOm