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Fon adds more funding, now at $50 mill April 16, 2008

Led by Coral Capital Management Fon raised another $9.5 mill and now has a total funding of $50 mill. The new money is planned to be used for a roll out of Fon in Russia this June. It will also help pushing a new generation of La Foneras, including USB ports (for external harddrives) and the faster 802.11n WiFi standard.

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BT and FON launch World’s largest Wi-Fi network October 4, 2007

BT and FON have finally put their efforts together and offer joined WiFi services. All 3 million BT broadband customers will be invited and joining members will be able to use all 190,000 FON hotspots around the globe as well as all new BT FON hotspots. Find out more about it on their new website.

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iPod Touch - the best mobile WiFi device September 6, 2007

Seriously, I thought my Nokia 770 offered the best mobile browsing experience ever and I still think the browser is great. Two things were not so great, though: mediocre storage (128 MB plus 64 MB MMC included, yes, I am not kidding) and no thumb board (virtual keyboard only works with pen). Ever since I first browsed the internet on an iPhone I became a big fan of it, but there was the prize tag and AT&T that hold me off for now. 

Since yesterday the most powerful mobile WiFi device is there and it is called iPod Touch. It doesn't come with a lot of storage (like big brother 120 Gigs iPod Classic) but 8 or 16 gigs will do for most tasks. And it has the best mobile bowser ever plus build in WiFi for only $299. I don't see how Nokia is competing here with their Nokia N800 Internet Tablet PC at $360 (Amazon). Ok, Nokia has the bigger screen (4 inch vs. 3.5) and open source platform but if it is about mobile surfing and media, the Apple iPhone Touch is it.

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New La Fonera+ now available July 10, 2007

Last week FON updated the La Fonera to the La Fonera+. It finally adds another LAN port ad thus you can now connect the La Fonera to your router and not loose a port. Here in the US you often get DSL modems with only one port and so far it was  impossible to use another cabled device (e.g. a VoIP adapter like my Grandstream 496 box). Now we are waiting for the next update which might feature a USB port.

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iPhone look-alike (sort of) June 25, 2007

iRiver announced a cell and VoIP phone that looks a bit like the iPhone (or a white version of it). It also features a portable music player of course. Some other extras comprise a FM radio and a positioning system based on WiFi not GPS. It seems that regardless of the success of the iPhone Apple defined a new design and set of functionalities for the cell phone 2.0 market.

via electronista.com 

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WeFi - like FON meets Twitter? June 18, 2007

A new social network basedon WiFi recently launched. WeFi requires you to download a WiFi manager (replacing your Windows wireless network manager) which automatically finds and connects to free Wifi. The WeFi map shows those free access points and also shows other WeFi users who are connected thus encouraging them to get in touch. It looks pretty neat and given the success of Twitter this might be a great concept as it adds more social features to free WiFi than the current Fon hotspot website users can customize. Obviously, WeFi relies on the availability of free WiFi and would even win if they collaborated with Fon. Let's see what happens.

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Apple iPhone - a good WiFi phone? June 11, 2007

Now it's coming - only a few days left until the Apple iPhone hits the shelves on June 29th. It looks like the iPhone focusses a lot on web browsing and internet capabilities (amongst other things like trying to be an iPod). With it's WiFi option, big screen, virtual QWERTY keyboard, automatic switching between landscape and portrait view and a new kind of rendering of websites it might be the ideal portable web tablet in the sub-UMPC class. We asked our readers and it seems that the Cingular/ AT&T brothership might be contraproductive, though.

 

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FON needs beta testers June 4, 2007

FON is adding on more web applications and is asking you, the FON community to apply to the beta tester program. You need to

Send an email to beta@fon.com until June 10th and you will receive notification whether you have been chosen shortly.

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Boingo roams on FON network May 25, 2007


Boingo and FON seem to have come to an agreement whereby Boingo is allowed to use FON's WiFi network for their customers. This will add 130.000 hotspots to be used by their users. Boingo users pay $7.95 per month for unlimited access to hotspots worldwide with their Boingo Mobile Unlimited plan. It seems, though, this can only be used on mobile devices that support WiFi - not with laptop computers! 

 [via businesswire.com]

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Is FON your favorite webware? May 24, 2007

You can vote for FON to become your favorite webware. Fon has been chosen to be amongst the top 100 Webware finalists on Webware.com, an initiative by CNET. There are 10 categories with 25 candidates each, 10 of which will be choosen by you - the audience. You can vote for FON here.

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FON innovates tinyurl May 7, 2007

Probably because Martin Varsavsky and his team always need to send these awful long URLs (e.g. for FON maps) they used tinyurl a lot. But tinyurl comes up with rather hard to memorize abbreviations so FON's new approach fon.gs is to mesh up tagging with URL shortening. Only drawback: easy to remember tags are often used already and can therefore not be chosen. Well, there is an option to leave the tag input field blank and fon.gs creates a random link. Just as tinyurl… 

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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.

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