fontastic.org - FON and free WiFi blog » 2006

Top 10 countries of FONeros August 29, 2006

Because we thought our map showing the geographical distribution of FON fans visiting fontastic.org might not necessarily indicate where Foneros actually come from, we pulled the most recent list of Foneros from Martin Varsavsky's blog and used good old Excel to visualize the top 10 countries. These account for 51121 Foneros of currently 81323 total.

We are using Google Analytics to track our website visitors on fontastic.org. First of all, we praise Google big time for this awesome tool! We love the Geo Map Overview and it actually shows the geographical distribution of FON fans worldwide. It's hard to see on this map (as we show the top 500 places) but the top 3 locations are New York (by far), Madrid and Taipei (which kind of surprised us). Welcome, bienvenidos and 欢迎 foneros!

New FON firmware allows bandwidth control August 24, 2006

According to a post on the official Spanish FON blog, the new version of the FON portal will allow for bandwidth control. Thus, Foneros will be able to exactly determine the bandwidth for both "internal" and "external" use.

Belkin WiFi Phone for Skype available Aug 31st August 16, 2006

Belkin's new WiFi phone looks great and all but unfortunately it doesn't support browser based authentication. This said, as long as FON requires this kind of authentication, the Belkin WiFi phone is not a real option to use with FON hotspots other than your own at home where you will be able to create a second, independent hotspot with FON's new firmware coming next month.

Belkin's WiFi phone is now available on Amazon for pre-order and will be released August 31st for $179.99. Click on the image to order (and yes, it is an affiliate link and you would support us without additional cost for you; thanks ;-))

Martin Varsavsky just mentioned he wants to bundle Sony's new WiFi handheld device Mylo with FON. Great idea as the Mylo seems to be the ideal device for free WiFi: it features build-in clients for Skype, GoogleTalk, Yahoo Messenger and an Opera Browser. A flip-out QWERTY thumboard allows for fast chatting. Check out the video on YouTube and this article on Engadget.

3 Skype WiFi phones for FON

Free WiFi for the East Village, NYC August 7, 2006

FON is rolling out a pilot program in New York's East Village giving away FON routers for free. The goal is to come up with 25.000 new FON hotspots throughout NYC. You can sign-up for your free router (or at least check whether you are eligible) via www.wifi4ny.com.

According to some sources, both Time Warner (cable) and Verizon (DSL) will work together with FON and allow sharing WiFi. FON is also partnering with Andrew Rasiej and NYCWireless.com for this project.

more on FON router/ phone August 2, 2006

According to the German FON blog, the phone will also support SIP protocoll (e.g. to use with VoIP providers like Vonage). We also found parts of the NY Times article there:

"A company called Fon, which is based in Spain and is backed by Skype and Google, is trying to accelerate the spread of Wi-Fi by selling cheap wireless routers to anyone who will agree to let other people in the vicinity use them by paying an access fee. The buyers can choose to split the fee with the company.
In October, Fon plans to begin charging about $150 for a wireless router that also serves as a docking station for a Skype-compatible Wi-Fi phone. The phone will connect easily to hotspots operated by Fon members.
“Wireless Internet infrastructure can be incredibly inexpensive,” said Martin Varsavsky, the founder and chief executive of Fon.
Without special software, like that from Fon, however, hotspots may not automatically set up a connection with the new phones. Instead, until the technology is smoothed out, users might have to configure their phones to connect whenever they are in range of a new hotspot."