fontastic.org - FON and free WiFi blog » 2007

London has largest WiFi - not FON April 24, 2007

350,000 citizens of London have wireless internet access as of today thru what The Cloud calls Europe's most advanced Wifi network. 127 nodes accomplish a 95% coverage which can be used for free for the first month (well, for the rest of April that is). As of May The Cloud charges 2.99 pound ($6) for half an hour or 11.99 ($24) per month.

It is probably the biggest deal so far for FON having convinced Time Warner Cable to team up with them and allow broadband subscribers to share their bandwidth with passer-bys via the FON network. This adds another 6.6 million potential Foneros to the movement. Martin Varsavsky wrote it took them some time to convince them but finally they bought in to the concept of that there are quite a few "I am rarely at home still I pay for broadband cause I use it for free when I travel" (quote) - users who would go with Time Warner broadband because they allow to be a Fonero. If both Fon and TWC would also jointly market their broadband products whereby Time Warner bundles routers with La Foneros, that might be a real added value and convincing argument for new customers.

New Foneras coming out April 11, 2007

During a cab ride in Taipei, Martin Varsavsky delivered a short video message on what's coming up next at Fon:

current Foneros will be updated to have 2 ethernet ports (to improve use with single port routers provided by many ISPs). They will also feature 2 antennas, one for the personal network and one for the Fon net. The updated version is expected to launch in June
Fontennas coming out in May. These will be flat panel antennas to be mounted inside of window frames to boost range to 200 yards
new La Fonera 2.0 will be launched in October. It will feature a USB port to connect a hard drive or memory stick and allow to integrate into Web 2.0 apps via it's own API
for the beginning of next year, Foneras supporting 802.11n standard are planned. These will have a range of up to one kilometer and transmit data at a faster rate (probably around 200 Mbit/s)

That's a lot of news for a short cab ride.

According to Om Malik, FON teams up with Time Warner Cable. Their goal seems to be to bundle FON subscriptions with Time Warner Cable offerings, namely quad play services (TV, Internet, Phone, WiFi/ WiFi Telephony). Neuf in France is already offering quad play services and has been entered an agreement with FON. British Telecom, who recently invested in FON is supposed to follow this trend as well.

German newspaper Die Zeit recently published an interview with Martin Varsavsky in which he talks about the future of FON. According to Martin his initial intention was not to form a company but a movement. He figured it would spread faster if there was some sort of monetary incentive behind it and thus opted for a "for profit" instead of "non profit" organisation. Asked about the business model Varsavsky says that currently FON relies on revenues from Aliens ~~Bills~~ only (Aliens ~~Bills~~ = those members paying for WiFi) but he would assume that selling routers will be another source of income once sponsership goes down and economies of scale go up. MP3 players or the use of content on the road could be another revenue model in the future, he says. Asked about the next milestones, Martin claims FON to have about one million users and about 3 million as a final goal (one each in Asia, USA and Europe).