Tuesday, December 20, 2005

More WiFi gadgets?

Who said Foneros would only be able to enjoy FON's roaming with a laptop a PDA or a WiFiFON?

Our top two gadget picks this week are the WiFi digital camera and the WiFi MP3 player:

Shoot and send: Imagine a digital camera where you don't have to constantly worry about having enough space on your memory card. The Kodak-Easyshare-ONE Zoom makes this a reality, being the first WIFI digital camera where you can send your pictures over the internet. Clearly, there are some limitations, namely, access to the internet is limited to email and to the Kodak Easyshare Gallery, but stil, no more "Full Memory" surprises.

I like that track!: MusicGremlin just announced that it will launch its WIFI MP3 player as well as its online music shop in time for the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) that will be held in Las Vegas next January. Imagine, you're in a coffee shop, you hear a catchy song over the radio and you want to download it onto your WiFi MP3 player. What do you do? Just connect to the internet via WiFi, access MusicGremlin's online portal and start downloading the song. Considering the portal will offer more than 2 million, there's enough to suit everyone's taste.

Posted by William on Gadgets
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Monday, December 12, 2005

Fonero meeting in Paris

Foneros1.jpg

French foneros gathered for an informal get together in Martin's apartment in Paris last Saturday. It was a great opportunity to ask questions to Yann (fonero leader for France) and Martin, and to share some thoughts and ideas. One particularly interesting idea to surface after the meeting came from Olivier Zablocki who plans to lead a maritime FON campagin that he calls 7 Seas FON. In a nutshell, the campaign aims to create a network of local communities of foneros marineros near sea-ports and inland ports where each community offers free year-round accomodation for travelling foneros marineros who pass by their port. Read more about it here (French only).

Cehck out more pictures of the Fonero meeting last Saturday. (thank you Rodrigo!)

If you have an idea that you want to share or are thinking of starting an initiative based on FON, let us know by posting a comment below or write us at info@fon.com. We'd love to hear from you!

Posted by William on Events
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FON explained by Ethan Zuckerman

Here's a really good post by blogger and Global Voices co-founder Ethan Zuckerman explaining, in his inimitable style, how FON works, how it could be very interesting for developing nations and why he's accepted to join FON's US board of advisors.

Posted by William on General
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Youth in Business: Ejovi Nuwere

Ejovi Nuwere, our lead fonero in the States is only 26. Ejovi however has put together an amazing American Board for FON. I just spent two days working with Ejovi in the Bay Area meeting with Dan Gillmor, a few key VC firms, hardware manufacturers and web site companies and I could very well see how so many different people can trust Ejovi.

Posted by Martin on Foneros
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Friday, December 9, 2005

The California paradox

Right now, i'm in the famous Silicon Valley. The cradle of the internet. I'm having lots of meetings with legendary venture capital firms, with WiFi access point makers and with the giants of the internet. In each one of these meetings, i try out the internet connections that people use here and i come to the mind-boggling conclusion that internet connections here are REALLY BAD. Seriously, people here surf at speeds that we were used to in Spain back in 2000. It's common knowledge that Spanish highways are in better shape than in the US but i am astonished to see that the people who design the most advanced software, websites and hardware, surf at internet speeds hardly faster than a dial-up modem. I inquired why internet was so slow and I always got the same answer: that it's due to the fixed line operator monopoly in the US where you have 2 or 3 operators per city and are all colluding. Interestingly, in Europe, there is a lot of competition among fixed line operators and very little with mobile operators. Here, it's the contrary, mobiles are much cheaper but fixed phone lines have smaller bandiwths and are very expensive. Clearly, this is not Sweden where Labs2 amazed me with their 1 Gig bandwidth for only 89 euros. Every time i enter one of these meetings here in Silicon Valley, i don't know what will be worse, the coffee or the internet connection.

Posted by Martin on General
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Tuesday, December 6, 2005

FON launch at Les Blogs

Yesterday, FON held its official French launch at Les Blogs, the blogger conference organised by Six Apart which ends today. Martin spoke on the panel entitled " How is blogging affecting corporations?". When asked about how he launched FON, Martin reminded the crowd how he had spent tens of millions of euros on advertising for his previous start-ups whereas today the FON buzz was started and continues to be spread almost entirely through blogging.

The reaction to FON at conference so far has been phenomenal. Many of the 350+ participants have already caught the FON bug, slapped on a FON sticker and are spreading the word. As the french say here "La révolution FON est en marche!"

Posted by William on Events
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Monday, December 5, 2005

How many foneros do we need to have global wifi coverage?

People who are interested in sharing excess bandwidth at home or work and obtaining bandwidth elsewhere have found in FON the right free wifi roaming platform and are downloading our software. But is FON doable? How many broadband connections do we need for FON to provide reliable wifi signal around the world? Surprisingly not that many. Nowadays the largest hotspot networks, T Mobile, Boingo, The Cloud, Orange, Vodafone, have fewer than 20,000 hotspots each. FON just launched and we have had over 1000 downloads in a week. That is 5% of the largest wifi hotspot networks. Skype to give an example of a much more established platform has around 150,000 downloads per day for a total so far of 200 million according to their site. But while FON is more complicated than Skype to download many less foneros are needed for FON to give a great wifi experience than skyperos to give Skype a great user experience. For Skype to succeed millions of people need to be on Skype. But one fonero can give coverage to half a city block and that is equivalent to thousands of people who live or pass by. Our estimates are that 1 million foneros around the world or around 1% of the people would be enough to give a global wifi signal. An ambitious but reachable goal.

via MV

Posted by William on Foneros
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