Web Worker Daily

Only the FON-ely...FON-liness Of The Long Distance Runner. Yes, I had a whole bank of puns to title this post. They’ll all aptly tragic in telling the tale of a promising piece of web worker infrastructure that has in essence become a network of very lonely and isolated hotspots…

I first came across FON at O’Reilly’s Emerging Telephony 2006 conference, as then company evangelist Ejovi Nuwere outlined a vision of a global wifi network built from the grassroots, owned and operated by its users. Ejovi explained that users installing a FON hotspot would be able to earn revenue from its use or, if they agreed to charge no access fee, use every other FON hotspot at no cost when travelling away from home.

A few months later I recieved a complimentary La Fonera router, becoming the 4089th ‘Fonero’ (currently there are 671′363 users). A few days ago, I switched off my La Fonera, packaging it for an eBay bidder that paid just $17. Now the thing is, none of those 671′362 other Fonero’s hotspots were in places I where I needed connectivity…

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For people who work on the web, getting access to the Internet is vital. If we can’t connect to our colleagues and projects online, we can’t earn a living. However, we can’t always stay attached to our home base and therefore we need a way to stay online while we’re on the go. Let’s give you a breakdown of the options for getting online on the go.

Cellular Options:

Mobile phone operators in the United States have been investing billions into building out their mobile broadband networks. Of the four major mobile carriers, three (Sprint/Nextel, Verizon and AT&T) provide high speed mobile broadband to their customers. The little brother of the bunch, T-Mobile, is still only delivering a slow EDGE network to subscribers but are rumored to be rolling out a 3G network soon.

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