I thought this myself. I'm Imagining somebody sat in the hotel cafe holding up a homehub asking how to connect it to FON. The staff looking very confussed

Believe me I have tried to use zon fon as it is in portugal,
click connect
open a web browser
limited connectivity
never get to the login page
machine works on local council hot spots and internet cafe,s
perfectly.
machine works on bt fon in the uk
Have purchased usb wifi dongle and with the supplied software In addition to the wifi supplied with the machine, just in case it was a problem with the supplied one.I can pick up 6 fon-zon free-internet networks
zon and fon are down as bt partners
I do now realise that there is no point in buying a fon router as I am already on a bt fon router, and share access here, I would only need a fon router if I was on orange or sky broadband.
BT fon and zon all blame each other, yet cannot talk to each other. the official line from bt is all 6 routers are turned off ? or using all their bandwidth, and that I should move my laptop a mile or so and try again, this I have done and the result is the same but only 5 networks.
But of course I still cannot get into the landing page.
Now either I am doing something extremely stupid, or something isnt working. Bt fon works ok in the uk on the machine but it does not work where I want it to, well for a short while anyway.
If anyone has any ideas
please

In reply to a post by southerly:

machine works on local council hot spots and internet cafe,s
perfectly.

Do you mean it works on such places in Portugal?

Where are you finding SIX fon connections? That seems quite alot.


This is the only explanation i could find and I'm not sure if it's right, but several forums all said it.

If there are 6 connections in range you're probably in a busy area where there are lots of people. From what I gather if there are lots of people using the FON network, or lots of people using the secured network hosting FON aswell you get 'limited or no connectivity.' This prevents the home users connection being slowed down.

If the home users secured network is being maxxed out, again FON won't work.

I think you're doing everything right, excuse my doubt earlier. Quite annoying!

I had a very similar situation to the OP just yesterday, where laptop connected to btopenzone, and got address/ gateway etc (10.72.yyy.zzz) but just would not offer a landing page.
this I can only put down to that openzone connection not working.

but for the OP to have more than 6 fail like this indicates other problems.

Fon is a great idea which doesn't work well in practice.
Just like christianity and communism.
People sign up for it because they hope to use it when out and about,
but then restrict or turn off their own because of bandwith and/or (unjustified?) security worries.

Just my 2p's worth.
Regards,
Martin

No it doesnt work, despite BT sending out letters with the telephone account telling you how good it is!
It needs someone to take BT to task in their misleading advertising but of course all of us are paying for expensive people to look after our interests at ofcom the asa and all the rest.
It does work in the UK via btfon but certainly not in Portugal where I have been trying to log onto zon fon for 2 years now. I suspect that if I purchase a fon router, leave bt who always say that they can find no problems on other isp networks. Probably the best way to go is to use another isp in the uk ( certainly a cheaper one, than bt whose policy is a bit bankerish, rob you blind ). and advertise something which they can not supply and cannot do anything about. I have written to Luis H the boss of fon who seems like a nice chap and doing his best but the simple fact is after 2 years and 3 machines and "help" from the BT forum ( If you cannot get to the landing page you cannot do anything yet alone click on the bt logo) as I have been continually told to do!
The sooner voda phone have a world wide wireless dongle at a reasonable cost i will get one and get rid of the land line), and while I am about it where has 3,5 G and 4 G gone they should pull finger as well Saudi Arabia has had 3,5 G for years and Azerbaijan has 4 G , Sorry for the rant but I am fed up with rubbish service because BT and others know that I can do nothing about it.

In reply to a post by southerly:

All I get is (limited connectivity), which according to bt is my wireless connection connecting to the other router, which according to bt are all offline.

Do you have Windows Vista ?

He needs to have a dynamically assigned IP address on his wifi setup.

If he has set a fixed internal IP address at home it will not pick up the correct IP address from the FON router.

People set fixed ones at home as maybe they want to share files easily between computers at home/share printers/use basic remote control etc. I do this all the time - but you need to uncheck all the IP address sections of the wifi set up (assuming windows) in order to use FON. In this situation your computer will happily see and connect to the FON router but you would get nothing in terms of login screen like this person is getting.

It does work - I use it all the time.

I have been able to use internet while on holiday, and many of my neighbours have a BT home hub so its a great backup for my broadband if it goes down.

It is also a great system in case of approaching my monthly cap on my broadband - if I want to have spotify on all afternoon, I can just connect one of my machines to next doors BT fon signal and do it without eating up my cap - as my Fon account is uncapped (I have a fonera).