Buenos Dias, Foneros

As networking technology goes, wireless Internet, or wi-fi, is hard to beat: it enables you to surf the Web from your living-room couch or send e-mail from a coffee-shop armchair. The trouble is that wi-fi’s range only extends a few dozen meters, so once you leave home—or when it’s closing time at your neighborhood Starbucks—you’re back in the Stone Age. Logging on through commercial wi-fi hotspots can also be cumbersome and expensive. But a Spanish company, FON, wants to change all this. Founded 15 months ago, FON touts itself as the world’s largest wi-fi community, claiming 230,000 worldwide users—or Foneros—who can log on to each others’ wireless networks for free. They do so by using FON’s La Fonera wireless routers, available at fon.com for about $39. The routers split Internet signals into a secure network for personal use and a public network that can be accessed for free by other Foneros. Each user can log in to the network of any other FON user worldwide.

The service isn’t perfect: some ISPs have balked at subscribers sharing their Internet access, and while fon.com’s searchable maps help you pinpoint every FON-friendly hotspot in the world, there are many areas where service is thin on the ground. Still, for the cost of an ordinary wi-fi router, it’s like getting a wireless couch to crash on in dozens of major cities.