Wednesday, October 31, 2007

Geneva, A New Home for Foneros

The City of Geneva and FON have officially announced a joint project to provide WiFi access to the city’s residents and visitors. Starting next week, 500 La Fonera WiFi Routers will be distributed to residents who have a broadband connection at home and have signed up for the project at: http://geneve-fon.org.

Residents who want to become Foneros and share some of their broadband with the rest of the FON Community will gain free and unlimited access to more than 250,000 FON Spots around the world. Once the 500 La Foneras have been installed, Geneva’s residents and all of your Foneros visiting the city will enjoy WiFi coverage.

This project is part of FON’s strategy to provide WiFi coverage in major cities worldwide, such as Tokyo, San Francisco and Munich. This initiative together with ChuecaWiFi in Madrid and FON’s partnerships with BT in the UK and Neuf Cegetel in France, give Foneros even more FON Spots around the world to connect to and give non Foneros more reasons to join the FON Community.

Posted by Steve Ross on Foneros
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Thursday, October 25, 2007

FON ‘Would they Share?’ Video Contest

We had so much fun creating our Matador videos, we want to share the fun by inviting you to create your own video. The winner will get two roundtrip tickets to Madrid, Spain, a tour & visit with the FON team at our HQ offices, and a three night stay at Martin Varsarsky’s (FON’s founder and CEO) farm in Menorca, Spain! You can find all the details and rules here!
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Posted by Steve Ross on Events
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Saturday, October 20, 2007

Unfolding News

The Fon Labs team is at it again. This time they've created unfoldingnews.com. This tool is designed to track news as it's reported. Today when major news organizations (finally) picked up the story of Comcast blocking BitTorrent I used it to see who broke the story first. It's still in the experimental stage so any suggestions are appreciated!

Posted by Steve Ross on Technology
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Thursday, October 18, 2007

Nokia N810

All I can say is wow! I liked the N770. When the N800 came out I thought it was great but needed a full qwerty keyboard. Today Nokia surprised us with N810! Of course it has wifi and lots of other goodies including GPS, Bluetooth, VGA Camera, Skype and a full slide out qwerty keyboard! I want one! Now to convince the wife we need one! Let me know if you have actually put your hands on one!
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Posted by Steve Ross on Gadgets
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Thursday, October 11, 2007

The FON Team; Part 1

Hello Foneros, I thought it would fun to bring you some details on the people who make FON run. I'll chase down more of my co-workers in the coming weeks to bring you some insight into what makes FON tick.

This week I'm sitting down with Iurgi Arginzoniz, our Firmware Manager.
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Q: When did you join FON?
A: Before it even began. I was working on a project by the Swiss market incumbent, Swisscom. It was called air bites and we did something similar to what fon is. But much more rudimentary. FON and Swisscom were about to go for a joint venture and we had already been working on it for 3 months, when everything went wrong and the deal was turned down. I left my company and joined the unborn FON at the request of Martin Varsavsky. This was November 7, 2005!

Q: What is your greatist accomplishment at FON?
A: Hard to tell. Probably the launch of La Fonera was the biggest thing till now. I went to Taipei, Taiwan, and worked day and night with Felix (from OpenWrt.org) and Jordi (our hardware expert) for 17days in a row. It was insane. When we came back, La Fonera was ready to be born. Of course, we improved lots of stuff afterwards.

Q: What lessons have you learned?
A: Well, probably, the most important one is that a good job is almost always rewarded. I worked hard and I'm very well respected at FON. FON is working hard and we're getting our results and keep growing at
unbelievable speed.

Q:. What are you working on now?
A: Part of my work cannot be disclosed, but we have 4 different projects in the hands of my department. They're all so exciting and I hope we can finish them on schedule. I think many people will be happy when we show the results.

Q: What would you like to see in the future?
A: Even if it sounds like an obvious reply: a free WiFi network that will permit us to be connected anywhere in metropolitan areas. I hope it's FON doing that, but the real wish is that it happens, whoever is behind
it. Internet is the cheapest luxury nowadays and WiFi can make it available for even more people.

Posted by Steve Ross on Foneros
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Thursday, October 4, 2007

Introducing the BT FON Community, Wi-Fi everywhere in the U.K.

FON and BT have partnered to create the BT FON Community to cover the entire U.K. with hundreds of thousands of BT FON hotspots.

You already know who we are, the world’s largest Wi-Fi Community, and BT is one of the leading broadband providers in the world, and the birth of our BT FON Community means something uniquely special for broadband users in the U.K. and all over the world.

We have integrated FON in BT and now more than more than 3 million Total Broadband customers are invited to join the enormous global community of people sharing their WiFi.

The fact that a market leader like BT supports FON’s revolutionary model for a massive Wi-Fi community built for and by the people marks a bold step in the communications industry.

Every person in the UK who agrees to share a small portion of their home broadband connection will be able to share the connection of any other member. Anyone joining in will be able to use those FON hotspots across the world and all the new BT FON hotspots free of charge.

From the very beginning, all of you, Foneros, believed in the concept of sharing and in people’s ability to build something important that would benefit everyone. BT is one of the most important telcos and ISPs in the world, so with BT FON those beliefs have proved to be well-founded!

And of course, the best news for all your Foneros around the world is that you can connect to the new BT FON Community Wi-Fi hotspots for FREE!

Thanks to all of you, and welcome to the U.K.!

Posted by FON Team on General
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Tuesday, October 2, 2007

FON in CNBC European Edition

cover.jpgFON was just featured in the CNBC European Edition with this photo on the cover! It took a split second for me to realize the photo was our very own Martin Varsavsky. I couldn't help but chuckle as I read the article. There were some great points but the paragraph I liked the best was;

"With the latest laptops and top-end mobile phones coming Wi-Fi-enabled, FON appears to be in a strong position to beat anything the mobile operators can come up with. Moreover, established hotspot providers cannot hope to compete on price. Emerging high-speed technologies like WiMAX will require huge investment, and the costs will inevitably be passed on to the consumer. FON’s future appears to be as bright as Alcobendas’ sun-dazzled streets."

It didn't end there though!

"Established hotspot providers like T-Mobile and Swisscom, operating at hotels and cafés, have enjoyed a virtual monopoly, splitting their income with the venue. FON is to them what Linux is to Microsoft."

Just when I thought it couldn't get any better I thought back to the headline. In case you missed it the title of the article was Wi-Fi hotshot! Go FON!

Posted by Steve Ross on Business
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