Is Fon cheating Bills out of money?

As far as bills are concerned they receive 50% of the of the money made from aliens buying passes on their hot spot. Heres a quote from Fons website:

"Make Money with your WiFi

Foneros can now both connect for free and make a little money by participating in the FON Community. It’s easy. Every time a visitor (non-Fonero) detects your WiFi signal there’s a good chance you can make a bit of “dinero”.

FON will pay you 50% of the net revenue that we get every time a visitor purchases a FON Access Pass through your FON Spot! There’s more. To help you promote your FON Spot, visitors can get 15 minutes of free access to trial the service before start purchasing FON Access passes from you! And we even pay you for this!

FON also gives you the option to personalize your FON Spot and maximize your coverage up to 5 times with our long range antenna, the La Fontenna.

Want to help build a WiFi planet and make a little money while doing it?

There are three easy steps to start making some money with the FON Community (at FON we call this type of user “Bill”):

1. Join FON
2. Get La Fonera
3. Become a Bill in your Userzone and enter your PayPal Account to get paid.

Already a Fonero but not making money yet? Change your profile to “Bill” and see how much money you’re making in your User Zone. Remember, Foneros can now do both: roam for free and make some money!"

From http://www.fon.com/en/info/makeMoney

Now, a member on the Fon boards posted what he made and then El Fon Blog took the time to analyze how much the poster made, how much Fon took, and how much is given to paypal, taxes, etc. Now this person (from the UK) ended up making only 36% instead of the 50% that they should have. Unfortunately there is still is a bunch of missing information and stuff that Fon will never disclose.

(source: El Fon Blog)

I have made a whopping $1.50 in the past year (never paid and I probably will never see the money any time soon) and as far as I am concerned Fon will never be profitable for me (as well as many other Foneros I imagine). Since I do not know too much about this whole situation I encourage people who have information about this topic please bring in forward on the Boards so we can crack down on Fon's shenanigans. Like always check out the links below and spread the word.

Fon boards: "Why is there a huge $30 limit to payout?"

El Fon Blog: "Fon does not split money 50/50"

Change of FON_AP to FON_FREE_INTERNET

"Thanks to feedback from some of our top Foneros we've learned that changing the FON_AP to a more attractive name significantly improved the number of visits. Based on this information we decided to change all FON Spots’ (public) signal names that weren't already modified by their owners.

How does this affect me?

This doesn't affect you. Your FON Spot visitors will now see this new signal name but nothing else has changed. Hopefully, you’ll even see an increase of visits! If you like, you can still the name to 'FON_nameyouwant', but we recommend that you to keep this new name or something similar. Instructions for changing the name are below.

How can I change the signal name?

There are two options…
Option 1

1. Connect to the MyPlace? signal. 2. Open your browser and type http://192.168.10.1 and the console will be loaded. The standard user name and password are both the word "admin". 3. Click on "Public WiFi?" in the menu and then you can change the name behind the 'FON_'. Save your changes and the signal name will change. Perhaps you will have to wait a bit and/or refresh the WiFi? manager of your device to see the new signal name.

Option 2

1. Log into your My FON user area at fon.com with your FON username (email-address/password). 2. Then go to "Configure your FON Router" and in the Settings tab enter a new "Public Signal" 3. Save the FON Spot personalization.

Changes may take up to 30 minutes to take effect on your FON Spot. If you want the change to happen immediately, reboot you La Fonera."

Now, I think this is the stupidest thing in the entire world that Fon could possibly be doing (although I could be wrong here. . . yeah. . .) I know this is only a default setting, and most people will be changing the name of the public signal anyway, but FON_FREE_INTERNET can be very deceiving to people who stumble upon Fon for the very first time. People will end up thinking they get unlimited free access to the internet (now that I think about it, they already get unlimited access to google, which I think is a bad idea) and in reality they get a 15 minute free trial or are forced to purchase a day pass. I encourage everyone to express your opinions on the Fon Boards and change the name of your public wifi signal. Thank you Fon for advertising that your giving away "free" Internet.


Fon Boards: "Change of FON_AP to FON_FREE_INTERNET"

Fon Blog: "New FON Spot Name"

Fon Russia and Comstar Partnership

When I first saw this whole deal with Fon Russia, I thought it was a complete joke. Fon used part of the 9.5 million dollars that they received for this and just recently El Fon Blog made a post about the number of active Fon Spots and found out (on May 21, 2008) that Fon Russia only had 23 Hotspots! Now, Fon has partnered up with Comstar in Russia and (a quote from Martin's blog)

"Comstar and FON will jointly develop a Wi-Fi internet access network in Russia, initially focusing on Comstar’s subscribers in Moscow, who will be able to easily join the FON Community. Comstar plans to establish 30,000 Wi-Fi access points in Moscow in 2008-2009 before expanding to other regions.

Comstar’s users will be able to rent La Fonera routers, connect them to their Internet connection and join the FON network. Like other Foneros, they will be able to roam for free in any place covered by FON, including the Comstar-FON network, using personal login and password details for Comstar’s DSL network. People who are not Foneros (we call them Aliens) will be able to access Comstar-FON’s network using pre-paid cards, SMS or the usual options available on our captive portal."

I guess that another 30,000 Fon hotspots would help add to the total of Fon spots worldwide (more in Russia doesn't do me any good though) and no where does Martin say in his post that the hotspots that Comstar plans on creating will all be Fon Spots. Also, Comstar users will have to rent La Fonera's. (who's making money off of this anyway? Fon and/or Comstar.)

Glad to see that money is being spent were it is needed. I think Fon needs to start doing more for the USA.

Martins Blog: "FON partners with Comstar in Russia"

Fon Blog: "COMSTAR AND FON WIRELESS DEVELOP GLOBAL WI-FI NETWORK IN RUSSIA"

How to advertise Fon...

Daniel Alvarez Perez, a Fonero from Spain and graphic artist, created a couple of very interesting advertisements for Fon.

Martins blog: "Advertising can be art"

Fon + Japan + Amazon = very popular

Adding to my previous post on Fon in Japan and Hong Kong, we will take a quick look at how popular La Fonera is on Amazon.co.jp (Amazon Japan). When Martin first blogged about this he said that La Fonera was "the third best networking product in Amazon Japan." Again I ask myself the question, why is this so?

Martins Blog: "La Fonera at Amazon Japan"