Act II For Google-Backed Wireless Startup FON


Remember the wireless company FON?

The Spanish company attracted money from Google, Skype and Sequoia Capital three years back to fund its Wi-Fi sharing scheme, where FON members let other members access the Internet over their home connections.

The story hasn’t had a fairy tale ending. FON has had some success in the United Kingdom and Europe, where it has about 400,000 members. Japan also has been a relative hot spot.

But the network didn’t catch on in the United States. Only 5,000 people signed up.

Now the company is ready for Act II. FON said Monday that it is launching a wireless router for the U.S. market that includes its network sharing technology and which allows people to remotely download data off the Web without using their PCs.

According to FON CEO Martin Varsavsky, the Fonera 2 is like a “Tivo for the Internet” and will do away with waiting for photos, movies and other files to download (or upload). Just set it and walk away.

A FON press release goes a step further, suggesting users can access peer-to-peer download sites such as BitTorrent, RapidShare and Megaupload as well as upload sites such as YouTube, Picasa and Flickr.

Varsavsky said the Fonera 2 will be priced to compete with other wireless routers – at about $90 – and be available in the states come October, after a September launch in Europe. Data storage is not included.

Unfortunately, it is hard to imagine the FON selling point of “no wait” will catch on big. When the Internet was young and people downloaded over dial-up modems, the world wide wait was part of the process. Now, with broadband speeds (as slow as they are) the wait for most people has gone away.

Instead of no-wait, convenience would have made a better ticket. The idea of Tivo-like storage for the Internet is a good one. But FON should have pitched its router as a device for getting content into the home and onto the TV without a struggle. That might have made ACT II worth seeing.