Thursday, July 24, 2008
FON Wiki is live!
The FON wiki is live! Please drop in an take a look at the new wiki we've set up. If you have something to contribute it's welcome too!
Posted by Steve Ross on General
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Wednesday, July 2, 2008
New Login Portal!
We've launched a new login portal! Thanks to all who gave us feedback, we've done our best to include your suggestions in the new login page. Please take a look and let me know what you think. Below are shots of the default and personalized pages. It's much cleaner and easier to understand then then our old page. We've got a mobile page coming soon too!
Default Page
Personalized Page
Posted by Steve Ross on General
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Friday, March 28, 2008
An update from Hong Kong
World’s first FON-enabled high-rise building!
We are extremely proud to announce that the Continental Diamond Plaza in Causeway Bay, Hong Kong, is now the world’s first fully FON-enabled high-rise building. Continental Diamond Plaza has 29 floors, and is home to many restaurants and bars in the heart of the city. You will find FON_FreeWiFi signals at every floor, which takes us yet another step closer to covering the entire planet with WiFi Everywhere!
Entrance to Continental Diamond Plaza, the world’s first FON high-rise
FON Hong Kong Caring Company Logo 2007-2008
It is with great pleasure that we announce that FON Hong Kong was awarded the Caring Company logo 2007-2008 for its efforts to give back to the community. FON’s operations and charitable activities, donations, and initiatives for the past year were reviewed by the Hong Kong Council of Social Service, who then awarded FON the Caring Company logo for achievements in all six Caring Company criteria (volunteering, employee friendly, employing the vulnerable, caring for the environment, mentoring, and giving).
The FON logo will be listed in “The Caring Company Commemorative Book 07/08”, jointly published by Hong Kong Economic Times and the Hong Kong Council of Social Service.
We would like to say a big thank you to The Boys’ and Girls' Clubs Association of Hong Kong for nominating us to the Caring Company scheme!
For more information, please visit the Caring Company web site.
Posted by Steve Ross on General
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Tuesday, March 11, 2008
Gmail and FON
You can now access your Gmail free at all FON Spots! For some time we've allowed everyone to view Google maps, news and search. We're now experimenting with Gmail too! We've learned that when people get to try FON they are more likely to buy a day pass or become a Fonero by purchasing a Fonera and sharing at home so they can roam for free. This is one more way to introduce people to FON and thank Google for investing in us!
Posted by Steve Ross on General
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Wednesday, February 27, 2008
Twitxr.com
Twitxr.com (it's pronounced "twitcher") is adding features about as fast as I can twitch! Now we've added Flickr support and the ability to search you e-mail address book for friends on Twitxr.com. If you haven't tried the "local" public timeline feature give it a try. It's a great way to see who's on Twitxr near you!
Posted by Steve Ross on General
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Saturday, December 15, 2007
New FON Community Tools Launched!
We've lauched our new community tools and redesigned our Maps
The new Maps allow you to send messages to Foneros anywhere in the world, search for bars, restaurants and other FON Spots in your favorite neighborhood, and personalize more of the information you wish to share with other Foneros. We've added filters to refine your searches and have significantly improved the download speed to make finding WiFi quicker and easier. Please give them a try and enjoy connecting (bad pun I know) with other Foneros!
The new and improved User Zone is now called now called “My FON". It's designed to give you access to the most popular FON features and make sharing WiFi a more interactive and community-based experience. Now you can use WiFi and your FON Spots to tell others about your neighbourhood and yourself, and learn about the best places to visit when on the go. I hope you enjoy communicating with and learning about other Foneros who are sharing bandwith too! To reach your My FON community tools simply log on at the top of our home page. From there you can check messange and manage your FON Spot.
Posted by Steve Ross on General
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Thursday, December 6, 2007
Travel Everywhere meets WiFi Everywhere
Find more than FON Spots everywhere when you travel with the help of the Everywhere travel magazine. Here at FON we not only love sharing with you news about FON, Foneros around the world, or fun WiFi widgets, but occasionally come across some other community powered idea that we get excited about and want to introduce you to. That's the case with 'Everywhere' magazine!
Everywhere is a new community-generated magazine for people who want to share stories about first-hand travel experiences. The heart of Everywhere is www.everywheremag.com, a site where anyone can submit and vote on their favorite places, photos and stories to be published in the magazine. The Everywhere community votes help decide what goes into each issue, and if your photo or story is published, you will receive $100 plus a free subscription to Everywhere magazine! The Everywhere community believes that travel is all around you - not just something you do once or twice a year - so members can submit photos and stories about places in their neighborhood, or from exotic vacations around the world. (Kind of reminds us of how we like WiFi around the world, but also next door.) So, next time you're taking your WiFi somewhere, check out www.everywheremag.com to find interesting new places, travel tips and more!
Posted by Steve Ross on General
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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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Wednesday, April 25, 2007
FON Tour and La Fontenna!
Below is a video of FON founder and CEO Martin Varsavsky giving a tour of FON's features and showing the new La Fontenna!
Posted by Steve Ross on General
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Friday, April 6, 2007
Free WiFi With Ads
Today if you are not a Fonero and you find a FON wifi signal you can view Skype, Google and Excite Japan for free because they are our investors. You can also pay 3 Euros or Dollars for 24 hours access, and 2 Euros or Dollars for any additional days. We are now experimenting with the possibility of ad driven access. The idea is that someone can watch a viral type ad and is then allowed to surf 30 minutes. If you want to surf longer, watch another ad. Of course you can still become a Linus and share a little bandwidth at home to roam the world for free with no commercials. You could also become an alien and pay for access without commercials.
Soon we’ll be deploying our flat panel Fontennas that extend the range of Fonera to about 200 meters / 600 feet. The rollout of the Fontennas will give us greater visibility and further drive the spread of FON! This may be a good time to try our ad experiment. We are still working out the details and would like your feedback. We intend to use the money from ads to subsidize our growth. We also need to figure out a model for sharing the ad revenue with our Bills and ISP’s. Any ideas and feedback you have would be greatly appreciated!
Posted by Steve Ross on General
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Wednesday, November 1, 2006
La Fonera Source Code
As promised here is the source code for La Fonera; La Fonera Source Code
Please forward suggestions for improvements to iurgi@fon.com
Also, if you like to do Openwrt projects please let us know, we are offering grants for interesting ones!
Posted by Steve Ross on General
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Tuesday, September 26, 2006
Sharing is FON . . . And here’s more to share
One of the most exciting and challenging aspects of building the FON Community is creating an absolutely unique business concept through direct, open and transparent processes. FON actually blogs and publishes its statistics, dilemmas, and strategies in a manner in which its Foneros and the general public can essentially experience FON’s business decisions in real time. FON discloses information that few companies would ever dare to share with the outside world. Unlike other companies, FON thinks sharing is fun. Foneros share, and FON shares. Sharing is FON.
And here is some great news to share, hot from the press . . .
Today we will cross the 20,000 activated FON Access Point mark. Unfortunately, for the time being, only 11,632 appear on the FON Maps. At the same time, we have 92,398 registered users, of which only 44,315 appear on our Maps. This is because we haven’t been pushy, asking each and every Fonero repeatedly to give us their name, age, and rank. Hopefully, as time goes by, more and more of the members of our Community will share their locations details in a way that will make our Maps more accurate and easier for everyone to use WiFi everywhere.
All in all, we think it is really cool that Foneros can connect to the Internet around the world in over one hundred countries using their WiFi. And even cooler, all of this started less than a year ago by a bunch of freakies in the outskirts of Madrid. We know that Foneros haven’t always had it easy. So, we’ve just launched La Fonera, the new FON Social router that is almost "plug and play" and can be set up in just a few minutes. Also, we think we are the only company in the world that is offering such an amazing product, La Fonera, for only $5 or €5.
FON is growing its Community of Foneros at an amazing rate, and we are trying to grow the FON team quick enough to support all of the new members. As a matter of fact, Martin has not had a siesta in the last 6 months. So, please, help, send us your CV, and join the team!
Posted by FON Team on General
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Tuesday, May 23, 2006
More FON Goods!
A number of new products have been added to the FON Shop. There’s now everything from baby clothes to thongs!
Note- dog not included.
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Friday, May 12, 2006
Coming soon...
To follow-up on Steve's recent entries, I'd like to share some fresh news I got in Madrid when i was there a couple of days ago. Here is a list of some features that will be added to the FON firmware, to the website and to the FON Captive Portal. Please note that this is not a comprehensive list, i'm just highlighting the juciest bits:
FON Maps
We're as keen as you are to see a dynamic, fun to use and practical FON Map. This obviously requires of quite a lot of work, and believe us, we're working around the clock to make it happen. New features on the horizon:
- the fonero will be able to enter a specific address and then automatically be centered on the FON Map with that given address
- A neat tool will soon be available that will be enable the user to find the shortest route to the nearest FON access point.
- the fonero will be able to manually adjust the geo-coordinates of his FON access point, to ensure maximum precision and avoid having "off-the-mark" access points.
New firmware version (0.6.5):
We said the new firmware launch would be soon, well, now, you can replace the "soon" by "imminent"
- the next firmware version will be upgradeable remotely, via the FON website. In other words, no more having to download the latest version and install it yourself on the router. This will be done automatically. All you have to do is click on a few links and presto!
- fonero's will be able to allocate X amount of bandwidth to be shared, within a given range.
- security will be improved between the router and the local LAN
FON User Zone:
- Each fonero will have his own personal user space from which he'll be able to change router settings remotely (eg. router SSID, local users, geo-coordinates etc...)
- the fonero will be able to check useful statistics about his router usage, know how many foneros connected to his router at what time and even know how much data was transferred.
- the captive portal will be customizable with some fun new features. You read right., the fonero will be able to customize the captive portal of his FON hotspot with a personal greeting and photos. Best of all, the fonero will be able to recommend two websites of his choice, that anyone landing on the captive portal will be able click on and surf for free, without having to log on to FON.
So there, i hope this short entry will assuage the anxiety of some (we read you on the boards, don't worry!) and delight others. Believe me, the next couple of months are going to be lots of fun! Stay tuned!
Posted by William on General
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Thursday, May 11, 2006
Continuing Improvements
I’ve seen a number of requests for more official FON presence on the Boards. It’s happening. You will now see responses from ModerFon in addition to William. As well as collecting feedback and providing responses they're making some other improvements too. In the coming weeks they will work to deliver:
1. More timely responses.
2. Automated spam prevention.
3. A “resolved board” to park items that no longer require a response. This board will remain open to all.
Please let us know if you have other ideas to make the boards more user friendly and helpful.
Posted by Steve Ross on General
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Wednesday, May 3, 2006
FON Goods
FON t-shirts, mugs, pins, magnets, stickers and more are available at The FON Shop! There are a lot of great ways to share your enthusiasm for FON!
Posted by Steve Ross on General
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Monday, March 13, 2006
Order status
If you haven't received a email confirming your shipment and you purchased your router more than one week ago please send an email to delivery-us@fon.com
Posted by Ejovi on General
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Thursday, March 9, 2006
The new WiFi
The first step in understanding what it means to be a fonero is to forget what you already know about Wi-Fi. This is not about laptops and cafes. This is about communication and access everywhere for nearly everything. Its about PSP's, digital cameras and magic lamps that are Wi-Fi enabled. Its about connecting neighborhoods to community LANs. It is about community! Foneros want Wi-Fi to be as ubiquitous as radio.
In NYC we have the FON Lab, it might eventually move to San Francisco. But in the FON Lab not only do we flash routers but we are testing the next generation of Wi-Fi routers and devices. The place is a horrible mess and we panic when we have visitors, but doesn't innovation start with chaos? ;-)
We love our foneros. Yes, we can be slow in responding to email. Yes, we have been slow in shipping routers. But we are always thinking of you and are working hard to keep you happy. Are you a fonero? Show us your colors and email me pictures! I want to know who you crazy people are! ejovi [ at ] fon . com
Posted by Ejovi on General
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Wednesday, February 22, 2006
FON Install Manual
The initial routers didn't go out with a setup manual because we were scrambling to ship. But the routers going out from this point on will include this FON Setup Manual. Check it out and let me know what you think.
We now have more than 17,500 Foneros!
Posted by Ejovi on General
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Monday, February 20, 2006
FON ships with love
Take a look at some of the USA FON staff. The router you receive from the USA is flashed, boxed and packed by the people in that picture. We aren't as big as Amazon so we can't move very fast, we are doubling staff over the next week. I'm the guy in the middle. My business card is included in every router shipped. So if you have any questions please email me!
I understand your frustration with the slow process but we are averaging 30 routers a day now! So things are getting better.
Posted by Ejovi on General
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Wednesday, February 8, 2006
Reminder for 'betatesters'
Hi all,
This is a reminder, for those who bravely downloaded the 'e-beta' version from the URLs we posted in this blog: that was a non-production version, and was configured to work through a testing server. It might not be active 100% of the time and it might not work 100% of the time it is actually active. Accounts might eventually disappear (don't worry, you can always re-register or just go for the officially released firmwares) or be disabled.
Please, understand that this is a very kamikaze-testing area, for those who like trying things even before they are out ;)
Thanks for your help!
Posted by Iurgi on General
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Sunday, February 5, 2006
A DREAM COME TRUE
As you know, FON is a global community of people who share WiFi connections. We call these people "Foneros", as a tribute to our heritage as a Spanish company. In order to become a Fonero, you go to FON, to download software that you install in your router, you place your antenna by a window and you share bandwidth with other Foneros from anywhere in the world. You can also buy the FON Ready router from our web site, plug and play. FON creates a free WiFi roaming environment for those who contribute WiFi signals, namely those who have already signed up with a local ISP and downloaded our software into their WiFi routers.
The success of FON, like the success of all online communities -- such as eBay, Skype, ICQ, IM -- depends on many people joining. At the very beginning, when there are no obvious advantages to joining FON, it is not so easy to get Foneros, even though the service is free. But as Foneros continue to join, and there are more and more Fonero hotspots, the dream of a unified global broadband wireless signal becomes a reality. The FON movement, as we call it, can achieve what 3G or EVDO has not -- a truly broadband wireless Internet everywhere. 3G/EVDO are great for coverage, but their throughput is pitiful compared to WiFi and they are way too expensive.
FON was launched just 90 days ago and we already have over 3,000 registered Foneros. While that number may seem small, 3,000 registered Foneros puts us at 10% of our 2006 objective in only 3 months: to become the largest hotspot network in the world by the end of the year. Currently, the largest global hotspot networks have around 30,000 hotspots. But after having built the second largest Spanish Internet company, Ya.com and the second largest publicly traded telecom company in Spain, Jazztel both with significant backers, I realized that at FON was going to need very special alliances to succeed on its objective of having 1 million hotspots around the world in 4 years. I knew that our method of downloading firmware was a much faster way of building a unified global WiFi signal than the traditional method used by local hotspots companies. Their way -- buying WiFi boxes and deploying them hotspot by hotspot -- is costly and inefficient. Ours is simple: download and install. Ours is a people's network. But for FON to succeed we need tremendous magnifying power for our message.
So I sought the ultimate alliances in the industry, and aimed high, very high. And today I have a great announcement to make: FON can now count Google , Skype, Sequoia Capital, and Index Ventures as investors and backers. They’ve joined us to help advance the FON movement, leading a group that has put 18 million Euros into FON and also committed to give us a strategic boost that should help us make this great idea into a great platform for everyone who wants a faster, cheaper and more secure wireless Internet. We’ll invest this money in R&D so we can make it quicker and easier to become a FONERO and so that we can expand the number of things you can do with your FON service. Our goal, after all, isn’t just to share bandwidth. It’s to use the power of people to people networks to create a global wireless network. What makes each of these firms great backers for us is that deep in their DNA is the idea of brand-new business models, tons of innovation and a commitment to making the digital world easier and cheaper. We feel the same way. So while we’re excited about (and responsible for!) their investment, we’re even more pleased to have their support. Also I am pleased to announced today that we have obtained the support of two significant ISPs for FON. In America Speakeasy has said that they welcome FON and in Europe, Glocalnet and FON have signed an agreement so Glocalnet sells its services FON ready and the Swedish foneros will soon be able move around Stockholm and other cities with their WiFi enabled gadgets. FON shares revenues with ISPs making it attractive for them to join the FON movement.
In coming days I’ll use this blog to tell you how we ended up here, including all the adventures we’ve had in the past few months moving from Madrid to Stockholm to London to Silicon Valley. I’ve promised to blog FON since the beginning. I’ve had to be quiet during the past weeks as we finalized our arrangements, but now I can use this space to tell about how backers like Niklas and Janus from Skype, our friends at Google or Danny Rimer of Index and Mike Moritz of Sequoia were so helpful in shaping and supporting our idea. I had never been to Silicon Valley until FON came about. Showing up from Spain with a business plan in my pocket and getting the support of two of the largest internet companies in the world in less than one month made me realize how it is that American dominates the internet. It´s all about willing to take risks. In this case what was unique was how rivals got together to collaborate at FON. This is understandable as unifying all the disparate WiFi signal out there and offering the internet everywhere has benefits for all Internet sites and ISPs involved (in the case of ISPs because FON is only free only after you sign up with a broadband ISP so FON is an added advantage at no cost to the ISP).
Now we turn to the task of building the movement. As you’ll see if you go to download our software, one of our first priorities is going to be expanding the platforms we work with. Today, if you’ve got a Linksys router (version WRT54G 4 and below, and WRT54GL/GS) you’re just a few clicks away from becoming a functioning Fonero. This router is costing us around 50 dollars at Linksys but for a limited time we are selling it for 25 dollars FON ready as we want to have as many Foneros as possible. A warning here. Becoming a Fonero if you already have a Linksys router is not as simple as say, downloading Skype. If you are not sure of your technical skills it is better that you simply buy a FON ready router. A second warning relates to your ISP. While we do know that some ISPs like Speakeasy in America allow FON do check with your ISP before installing FON as they may not yet allow it. At FON however we believe that as we sign more revenue share agreements with ISPs they will end up allowing FON since FON is not a free WiFi platform but a free roaming platform among paying customers. In the meantime we’re already working on software for other routers and we’ll roll them out as quickly as we can. (You can click here to sign up for an email note from us when we’ve got software for your router model.) In the future people will become foneros by working off more router models. At FON we have one simple idea: if you have broadband at home, you should have it wherever else you go -- free. Like Skype, FON is one of those low cost high advantage proposition as the chance of other foneros coming by your place is low (and in any case our software limits their bandwidth consumption to 50% at most) but the benefit to you and your WiFi enabled gadgets of having free WiFi roaming will be big when many foneros sign up.
Now how do we plan to make money at FON? At FON we plan to make money with characters we call the Aliens. To us the world is divided into Linus, Bills and Aliens. A Linus shares his/her bandwidth for free with other Foneros, Bills share their bandwidth for a small fee, and Aliens don't share their bandwidth at all.
If you capture FON´s signal and you are not a fonero in 120 days you will have to pay to use the FON signal. Our rates for Aliens will be like those of public transportation, a price of a subway or bus ticket. So FON will provide either free WiFi or very low cost WiFi. Still if you are using FON everyday it´s better that you become Fonero by signing up for broadband with your local ISP cause those low cost rates add up to more than their monthly charges if you log in everyday. What do we do with the money from Aliens? We share it with the ISPs so they support FON. Also in case you are interested in FON only to make some money and not to get free WiFi roaming we also share it with you. At FON you can choose. If you become a fonero to obtain free WiFi everywhere you are a Linus fonero, if you become a fonero to make money out of your WiFi connection you are a Bill fonero. We at FON think the world is built by Bills and Linuses (Bill comes from Bill Gates and Linus from Linus Torvalds) and enjoyed by both builders (Foneros) and Aliens who just like to enjoy things without caring much about building them.
Here's what Skype thinks about this dream...
Posted by Martin on General
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Thursday, January 26, 2006
FON USA Launch
Today I spoke at ETel about FON in America. I was only given 15 minutes and there is so much I wanted to say that I just didn't have time to.
For example, I didn't talk about the ability we are building into FON that will allow one FON hotspot to share documents, files, and bandwidth another FON hotspot nearby in a mesh manner.
I didn't talk about out commitment to bring Wi-Fi to communities that need it, places like Harlem in NYC and the less advantaged areas of Paris.
I didn't talk about the social networking component. The ability for each hotspot to have a home page that the user can personalize. So you can say "if you are in my neighborhood, check out this cafe across the street that has the best espresso in NYC!" And the ability for users to be able to send you thank you notes. This isn't in the system now, but its in the 6 month road map.
I also said that Martin laid down trans-atlantic fiber, I don't think thats true. But it is true that he laid fiber across europe.
Anyway, enough of my disclamer, why don't you listen to the FON USA launch yourself.
Christine Herron, Stuart Henshall at SkypeJournal and Alec Saunders blogged about the talk.
Posted by Ejovi on General
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Friday, January 20, 2006
WiFiFON and 3G
At PTC there was a plenary panel with the director of Marketing for Qualcomm, his name was...let me find his business card...Jeffrey K. Belk, SVP Marketing. Jeffrey made some very good points about how WiMax is over hyped. He wrote a really interesting whitepaper on WiMax/WiFi and 3G. I only read through it very quickly (it was written by a marketing guy after all) but the gist is that WiFi / WiMax isn't going to replace 3G networks.
He is right. Maybe when WiMax is REALLY ready in 3 years or so we can talk about the likelihood 3G being replaced but we are a long ways from that point. WiFi is a hotspot technology. You have to go to a spot to use it, while 3G networks have a lot more coverage. But that doesn't mean WiFi is irrelevant to the cellular business. WiFi is cheap. 3G is great for reach but bad for throughput and cost. WiFi is poor for reach but great for throughput and cost. The two will co-exist. When WiMax is ready FON will use that, but right now I am really excited about 802.11N and its expanded coverage ability. We will see it in stores mid 2006. I hope the first FON routers will be 802.11N but that remains to be seen…
3G is not going to replace WiFi, even though Verizon, god bless their heart, is advertising on the back of every major business magazine that WiFi is crap. I don't blame them (it was written by a marketing person). After the session I told Jeffery Belk that FON believes, when given the option users will prefer to make a cheap call over a WiFi network rather then traditional cell networks. Even if that means standing still for a few minutes (it’s rude to talk while walking anyway). He told me I was crazy! He said, "no one will ever want to make phone calls over a WiFi network" when given a choice. My response "I think you're wrong, and hopefully FON will prove it."
Jeffery may have been right about WiMax hype but he is dead wrong about WiFiFON's. Lets see what the nice people at eTel will have to say.
Posted by Ejovi on General
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Friday, January 13, 2006
FON in Less Developed Countries
While the prices of goods manufactured in less developed countries vary from country to country depending on income, currency strength, natural resources, the prices of internet access and internet equipment are pretty standard around the world. Surprisingly, they are higher in less developed countries where income is much lower. While in America the GDP per capita is $36K per year and the annual cost of an internet connection around $360 or 1% of that in Argentina the annual cost of broadband is around $480 and the annual GDP per capita around $4000 or 12%. Taking this into consideration FON has developed a different model for Less Developed Countries that relies on clusters of people sharing a broadband connection through WiFi. While in Europe, Japan and United States FON´s motto is share broadband at home have broadband everywhere in Argentina for example our motto will be, team up with your neighbors to share bandwidth...through wifi. In order for broadband to have a similar impact on people´s budget the sharing will have to be on an approximate 10:1 ratio. Initially ISPs may be against our model but we will probably prevail when they see that we will work with them, deploy our model in low income neighborhoods and the result will be that more connections are sold. In addition, users will see more value as they will be able to roam from cluster to cluster and will be more likely to pay. In some way we will implement something akin to Grameen Phone , but for WiFi.
Posted by Martin on General
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Tuesday, January 3, 2006
WiFi guru's predictions for 2006
Blogger, journalist and WiFi guru Glenn Fleishman just posted his predictions for the new year. Here are a few eye-catching ones:
- Wi-Fi hotspots will cross 200,000 worldwide. They’re already at roughly 100,000 worldwide today. The trend isn’t lessening at either the informal level (adding a Wi-Fi gateway in a coffeeshop) or the top-end (installing a multi-million dollar airport system).
- All consumer electronic categories will have many Wi-Fi-equipped models. It may take until Christmas 2006, but every single category of consumer product will have not just a proof of concept, but many items with Wi-Fi built in. Digital cameras with Wi-Fi might finally reach the consumer level with reasonable features, such as Secure FTP (SFTP) support. The remaining wild card is whether devices will be able to stream wirelessly among any equipment or whether the MPAA will fight back those attempts and require encrypted streams among licensed devices.
- Municipal Wi-Fi will continue to gain momentum. Hundreds of new RFPs will appear next year and hundreds of millions of dollars will be spent. Battles among incumbents, competitive operators, cities, and non-profits will be waged. But networks will be built. And we’ll finally see whether muni-scale networks can deliver on promises, probably within the first quarter of 2006.
A promising year indeed for Foneros...
Posted by William on General
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Monday, January 2, 2006
Happy New Year!!!
The FON team wishes you a Happy New Year. 2006 promises to be an exciting year for Foneros and what better way to start things off than to check out what's in store for WiFi fans at the upcoming International Consumer Electronics Show set to open its doors from January 5th to the 8th.
Posted by William on General
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Monday, December 12, 2005
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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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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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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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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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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