Mozilla announced today that the long-awaited VPN (virtual private network) service will launch later this summer, and in fact "in the coming weeks".
The upcoming service will be renamed from its original name Firefox Private Network in "Mozilla VPN".
The name change came after the extension of this VPN service from a Firefox extension to VPN of the whole device, which is capable of routing traffic for the entire operating system system. This includes other browsers.
Mozilla VPN will initially be released for Windows 10, Chromebook, Android and iOS devices.
Mozilla reported that beta testers also requested a Mac client, along with a application Linux.
Once Mozilla VPN is out of beta, the service will continue to be available to US users only (for now).
However, Mozilla has stated that it intends to make its VPN available in other selected areas by the end of the year.
Regarding the monthly charge, the company stated that “it will continue to offer Mozilla VPN with the existing pricing model for a limited time, which allows you to protect up to five devices with Windows, Android and iOS at $ 4,99 per month. ”
The Mozilla VPN was released last September. The beta was only available to US residents, but the company announced that users from more than 200 countries have joined the waiting list.
Mozilla said the VPN works by routing web traffic through a network of trusted proxies. The extension of the VPN browser uses Cloudflare servers, while the device-wide VPN uses Mullvad servers and the WireGuard open source VPN protocol, which was added to the Linux kernel earlier this year.
Since the release of the beta service last year, Mozilla has created a comprehensive faq with detailed support questions and answers both for browser extension as for VPN of the whole device.