Fon makes Brooklyn the poster child for its shared Wi-Fi community in the U.S.

http://gigaom.com/2013/12/12/fon-makes-brooklyn-the-poster-child-for-its-shared-wi-fi-community-in-the-u-s/

Crowdsourced Wi-Fi provider Fon’s launch in the U.S. has been a bit disappointing. In October, it announced big plans to bring its service back to American shores, but its signature Wi-Fi router, the Fonera, hasn’t started shipping yet. And though it’s started signing up community members, it hasn’t exactly broken any recruitment records. Only about 1,000 future ‘Foneros’ are on its list.

Fon, however, is planning a surgical strike of sorts in New York City in the next few weeks with the goal of building some momentum. Fon’s bandwidth-sharing model works best when it has dense clusters of members all in the same geographical area – in the U.K., France and Japan, Fon is in one of every six households thanks to its partnerships with local carriers. So Fon has decided to target one particular NYC neighborhood: downtown Brooklyn.