Tuesday, November 29, 2005

Ejovi Nuwere: FON leader for North America

I'd like to introduce to you Ejovi Nuwere, our FON leader for North America. Ejovi is one of those IT prodigies. He was a hacker when he was young, but now, at 25, he is the head of his own internet security company and Business Week one of the top 20 most talented entrepreneurs in the US.

I met Ejovi at the March 11 conference and i was really impressed ith his ideas on how to make the internet secure and at the same time, more open. When i started FON, i invited Ejovi to be our North America leader and he accepted. And not only did he accept, but he also shared with me the great news that Andrew Raseiej, the political WiFi activist from New York, had joined FON.

Posted by Martin on Foneros
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Saturday, November 26, 2005

What about the Bills?

Bills, we owe you, we know. Like we said many times, the WiFi revolution needs both the socialists (the Linuses) and the "free marketeers" (the Bills). For now, perhaps unfairly, only Linuses can use FON. But what we can say to the Bills (who are waiting to set up their router and place their antena where they can catch lots of Aliens who ready to pay for a connection) is that we are working very hard to set up a secure system for the Bill option to operate smoothly, and securely. Luckily, we're not the ones who invented the idea of having a hotspots and charging users of these hotspots. Spain has 1000 charging hotspots and Europe has more than 25,000 so that there are systems already tried and tested that we're adapting. But "for when?" you ask. January 15th seems to be a reasonable date. Today, if you are a Bill you can install the firmware and sign up as a Bill as soon the Bill option is ready.

Now, who should be a Bill? If you own a bar, a restaurant, a hotel, a pharmacy, a laundro-mat, a newspaper kiosk, or if you live in a place where a lots of tourists pass by, then you should be a Bill. We're currently testing directional WiFi antenas that increase your WiFi coverage (perfect for parks!) and we're also in talks with super Bill. Super Bills are entrepreneurs who want to invest in routers and place them in public places and then share their revenue with FON and the owners of these public places so that the latter don't have to buy routers themselves.

Posted by William on Foneros
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Friday, November 25, 2005

The english website is up!

Hurray! The english website is finally up (http://en.fon.com/). It's still needs some polishing, but bear with us, we're working on it. If you see any bugs or typos we haven't spotted, don't hesitate to write us!

Posted by William on General
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Tuesday, November 22, 2005

A flat worldwide calling plan?

At FON, we"re studying the possibility of coming out with a WiFiFON with a worldwide flat calling plan. We think that we'll be able to charge 30€ a month for a WiFiFON that can connect to the FON network and to all open WiFi networks, and be able to call other WiFiFONS as well as all landline numbers in Europe, North America, Argentina, Russia, Taiwan and many many more countries. Stay tuned...

Posted by William on General
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Sunday, November 20, 2005

For Share

Gorka Aguado of Polinomio Estudios and Teranga Percusion offered us a glimpse of their talent with this video clip they kindly prepared for the FON launch: Se Comparte (For Share), dedicated to Linuses and to the WiFi nation.
Download it here:

- Se Comparte (on YourTube.com)
- Se Comparte (256, .wmv)
- Se Comparte (512, .wmv)

Posted by William on Foneros
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First PSP connected to FON

At SIMO we successfully connected the first PSP (Play Station Portable) to FON. Gadgets like these are those who are really going to drive the WiFi revolution: any type of cool device that can connect to the internet anywhere.

via Teo

Posted by William on Gadgets
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Wednesday, November 16, 2005

Photos of FON at SIMO

Here are the first pictures in cyberspace of FON at the SIMO tech fair. The fair is taking place in Madrid from the 15-20 November. These photos were uploaded to flickr by Manu, one of the foneros who came to help us at SIMO (and one of the first ones to have a FON enabled router!).

fon-simo-manu.jpg

Posted by William on Events
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Tuesday, November 15, 2005

FON has gone live!

www.fon.com went live last night. The website is in Spanish only but, very shortly, there will be an English version. We're also working on the French version which we plan to publish in the very near future. For now though, if you know some Spanish, you can already sign up for FON and download the software. It´s free!!

Posted by William on General
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Can a company run an election among its clients to hire its executives?

At FON we think we can. At FON we are now appointing, country, city and neighborhood leaders who are all volunteers to get FON going. But we think that half a year is the maximum amount of work we can ask from people who are volunteers. After that we will hire some of these volunteers as employees. What´s new about FON is that it’s partly a company and partly a social movement. Instead of using headhunters, place ads and go through other conventional means, we will have elections in countries and cities and hire our employees through this process. So in the future if you want to work for FON, you have to run for election and win the votes of your local fonero community.

Posted by William on General
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Saturday, November 12, 2005

FON: not only bad news for mobile operators

After studiying the issue of coverage for FON's soon-to-be-released Wififons, we concluded that although the advantage of Wififon over GSM in terms of calling costs is incredible, the disadvantage in terms of coverage is also quite important. For this reason, we’re thinking of creating DUAL wififons that would combine WiFi and GSM. In other words, FON would also sell a wififon model where you could insert a SIM card and mobile operators would make money.This way, foners would be able to call for free if there’s Wifi and pay if there isn’t. Either way foneros would always stay connected.

Posted by William on Gadgets
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Friday, November 11, 2005

FON on the go

Some Linuses have been wondering if they will be able to connect to access points in other countries? The answer is YES. One of the most incomprehensible policies of major operators like Vodafone, Orange and T Mobile is precisely their roaming policy. In an open border Europe and a global internet without borders, these operators over-charge you as soon as you step out of your country. Our plan is to have FON in as many countries as possible and enable FON members to connect wherever they are.

Imagine you live in Spain and you go for the weekend to Paris and receive calls to your Spanish landline number on your WiFiFon. Well, the person calling you will pay what he/she pays for a call to a landline number in Spain (or nothing if the person uses a flat fee calling plan) and you don't pay any roaming charge when receiving that call in Paris. But there's more: all your calls to other WiFiFONS are free and all other calls are at very competitive rates similar to Skype rates.

Posted by William on Gadgets
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Our Strategy vis a vis ISPs

Our strategy vis a vis ISPs around the world is the same as the one in Spain. We want to team up with an ISP in a market and allow only that ISP to sell their DSL/Cable services with FON inside. All other want to be foneros of course can download our soft, buy the right routers if they don´t have a linux enable wifi access point and get going with FON. But we think it´s easier to team up with one ISP who will make this simple claim to the potential customer. With our competitor you pay 30 euros per month for bandwidth and you get bandwidth at home. With us you pay the same 30 euros, but you get bandwidth all over the world for free! We have FON INSIDE.

Posted by William on Business
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Thursday, November 10, 2005

FON presentation at SIME

Martin's FON powerpoint presentation at this week's SIME conference in Stockholm is now available for download.

Download it here.

Posted by William on Events
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Saturday, November 5, 2005

Some FON Maps, Málaga (Spain)

Some demo points indicating FONers in Málaga (Spain).

Posted by Alvy on Foneros
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Friday, November 4, 2005

Fonero Leaders in Sweden, France, and Argentina

We already have three FONERO leaders outside of Spain. They have been selected out of 42 candidates from 17 countries. They are Yann Mauchamp, our Fonero in France, Hilarion Del Olmo our fonero in Argentina and Ola Ahlvarsson our fonero in Sweden. As for our launches, we will launch FON at SIME in Stockholm on Nov 10th, in Spain at SIMO on Nov 15th and launch in France at Les Blogs on Dec 5th. We still don´t have a start up date for Argentina. We are waiting to make decisions on other countries although we have amazing leaders from USA for example. The FON proposition is simple: a software download that turns your wifi into a hotspot to be shared with other foneros. This way you will continue paying for bandwidth at home but have bandwidth both at home and throughout your country. The execution of the FON strategy however is not so simple and that´s why we need FONERO leaders who can spread the message locally. 2006 will be the year of the wifi gadgets. Other than laptops and pda´s we will see wifi ipod type devices, wifi playstations, nintendo revolution, wifi phones, wifi digital cameras. But what are all those good for without a wifi nation? Get your toys out of your bath tub! Join FON.

Posted by Martin on General
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List of all the routers that will work with FON

FON software is open source. We are inviting anyone interested to improve the software. Here's a list of all the routers that will work with FON a couple of months from now. Basically, to work with FON, a router has to be a sort of mini Linux computer.

Posted by Martin on Technology
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The Linksys WRT54G is ready to go!

We officially have the first version of the FON software running smoothly. The access point it works with today is the Linksys WRT54G. This model is sold in most computer/IT stores including FNAC and PC CIty. Why this model? Because it works wth open source software and it's great quality. If you already own this model, all you have to do is download the FON software, connect your Linksys, install the software onto your Linksys and convert into a FON access point. Soon, all this is going to be explained in detail in the FON website. If you don't already have a WiFi connection, we recommend you buy this model in any store or you can buy one from FON on our website. If you buy it from us, you'll have it already configured and ready to go. Obviously, for some, it's not fantastic news that FON only works with Linksys, but rest assured, in less than 4 months, FON will work with many more models. To make up for this, we're thinking of how we can make Aliens pay Bills and Linuses without FON pocketing anything, until the price of the units bought is amortized.

Posted by Martin on Technology
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