[pocha]

Its like Fon except :-

1. There are no telco partners. We directly sell to consumers.

2. Data sharing & usage is metered. You accumulate then you use it elsewhere. Its called Karma GB.

3. We are also thinking of putting up a feature that lets you enable 'free wifi' if you are a cafe/restaurant owner and you need a DIY solution for your customers. Thinking of keeping it as paid feature.

[icebraining]

Fon also sells directly to consumers: https://shop.fon.com/en/product/fonera

I can use any Fon router despite not being a client of a partner ISP.

[IshKebab]

It sounds almost identical to what Fon was originally.

[colindean]

IIRC the original Fon lacked metering of any kind. If you shared for free, you could use for free. If you charged, then you had to pay.

[Milner08]

But, if I'm in an area where people are very unlikely to use my WiFi how do I accumulate 'Karma'? Do I then have to buy Karma?

[pocha]

Ya, you pay to buy Karma GB & use it at a Griggi WiFi. The idea is, if the concept becomes ubiquitous, people will be constantly looking for Griggi WiFi when they are close to residential/commercial establishments. You may have someone using your WiFi too :-).

We are also going to put a feature which would let people manage their free WiFi hotspot with Griggi as well.

The vision is to be the default WiFi sharing platform across the world. As a user, you just have your Griggi username, password & you use it to connect to every other WiFi hotspot.

[icebraining]

The thing is, the Karma system directly collides with your goal of becoming ubiquitous.

I live in a small residential street where every neighbour who wants Internet has cable or fiber, so the chances of gaining significant Karma are very low. Let's also suppose I'm not a geek.

So, why would I pay $20 (+shipping?) for a new router, ask a friend to come by my house to install it, pay the electricity costs, etc, when in the end I'll still have to pay more to actually use it?

The Karma system eliminates the incentive for almost anyone except those living in busy streets to purchase and run their own router.

And this is helped by the fact that metered connections have all but disappeared around here, so a person with high Karma isn't actually "paying" anything for it, it's merely a rent that she can extract from the location of her property.

So I predict you'll mostly get users in city centers, which is where they are the less useful, since it's also where you can usually already get free or cheap Wifi.

[pocha]

You are mostly right. Everybody has an internet connection now a days. There is sizeable migratory population which could get benefitted from such a system as they dont need a new wifi connection every time they change place provided neighbours have Griggi. Its chicken & egg for sure.

What we are trying to do is similar to what Uber did to cars. Not everybody need to own a car. Similarly, not every household need a dedicated wifi connection when you can borrow some from neighbours.

Apart from city center, big apartments are another good case for Griggi. Big apartments in cities have a good number of migratory population.

Free WiFi hotspots that works is still a rarity in city centers of developing nations. Griggi is also an attempt to organize the unorganized free WiFi hotspots. A couple of guys are trying to solve this problem by building a mobile app that does the job of remembering username password of free wifi hotspots. Griggi is an attempt to solve the problem at the root. But I agree that it also makes things more challenging for us.

[Milner08]

Im in the UK, and while I think this is a cool idea we already have BT Openzone/Fon available in a lot of places (It works in a similar way, except its free for anyone who is also on BT). We also have free 'Cloud' WiFi in lots of public places. I'm sure you'll have some success in areas without lots of WiFi hotspots, but you may struggle over here.