fontastic.org - FON and free WiFi blog

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.

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

be over 18 years old
be an English speaker (communication related to this program will be sent in English only)
have a registered FON user name that has been active for over 6 months
have a La Fonera installed and registered for over 4 months
live in one of the following countries:Germany, Austria, Bulgaria, Belgium, Cyprus, Denmark, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Estonia, Finland, France, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxemburg, Malta, Norway, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, United Kingdom, Czech Republic, Romania, Sweden, Switzerland, Canada, USA, Hong Kong, Korea, Taiwan, Japan

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

Google invests in Meraki’s mesh technology

Free Fonero from a Fonero friend December 21, 2006

Starting today, FON launches the "Fonero gets Fonero" program (details here). Every registered Fonero can invite up to 3 friends to become Foneros as well and let them pick up a La Fonera router for free (shipping included). Just log in and send out your invitations. Your friend will find a link to the shop after sign-up where a La Fonero router waits to be checked out for $0 (or €0 in Europe).

The City of Blanquefort in the west of France has bought 1000 La Fonera routers. They will be distributed for free (as a Christmas present if you will) amoungst DSL subscribers in town who are willing to share their bandwidth with others. The City Hall will even help setting the router up. Blanquefort, that calls itself "Ville Internet", is pretty advanced with regards to internet technology. They have blogs, vlogs and podcasts available about different topics such as the renovation of the town hall, for example. With only 15.000 inhabitants, the city will have almost 7% foneros just from this initiative.

Hurry up, Germany: free routers up until Nov, 8th November 7, 2006

FON has continued their promised-based distribution of La Fonera for another 3 days until tomorrow, Wednesday November 8th. The price is still 0 Euros, shipping included. Also available in Austria.

French ISP Free opens all 300,000 WiFi hot spots of their users to be used by any subscriber to Free. If you have signed up with Free you can from now on roam anywhere you find a Free hotspot and make free VoIP phone calls (roaming is restricted to 64kbps). Frees set top boxes will have this feature turned on by default, all other users need to switch this on to be effective.

Is this a threat for FON? Well, I guess yes and no. In France this means some competition, no doubt. But it will also help FON. First of all, the whole free WiFi idea (or movement if you will) gets more momentum. Plus, even Free users can only roam within France whereas Foneros roam worldwide. Once you get used to it in France you might want to join FON as well to be able of taking advantage of free WiFi everywhere.

via GigaOm, Engadget

Today, Martin Varsavsky spoke at ETRE 06 (European Technology Roundtable Exhibition) in Barcelona. Red Herring interviewed him yesterday. Some interesting facts were unveiled:

FON is currently in negotiations with US cable companies to team up with them to solve the "last few feet" problem, but Martin didn't really want to go into detail (see the video here)
The number of hot spots needed to make some impact was estimated to be 500,000, a real impact at 1 million (which are planned to be reached by 2008)
FONs cash reserve will last another 2 and a half years (spring 2008) by which point Martin assumes to have gained positive cash flow
Advertisement is not planned to be rolled out and the marketing strategy will continue to be build upon word of mouth only
According to FONs own numbers, the current user base accounts for 95,000 foneros and 20,000 registered routers (hot spots)

He further stressed the point to see ISPs not to be competitors but rather thinks 3G providers would fall under this category.

No related posts

Mike vs. Martin: current FON war and new ideas October 3, 2006

There is a war going on, now you can't deny it anymore. Every new article about FON ends up in a discussion whether Martin (Varsavsky) is the good guy or Mike (Puchol), whether or not FONs figures on active routers and foneros is accurate. First of all some facts:

It has all started with Mikes in-depth analysis of FONs database feeding their maps. According to his findings only 3.674 routers have been online within the last hour (another 7.814 routers have been registered)
Martin left a comment stating that only the newer versions of the firmware could be tracked which leads to the assumption more routers are in fact online but can unfortunately not been tracked (and won't show up as dark-green spots on maps)

From there on it was basically all about mutual accusations not only between the two of them but also those who are either pro or contra FON (e.g. see here and here). Mike repeatedly noted he only comments on FON on his own blog or as a direct comment on Martin's but would not post on forums anymore as he might be biased being part of a new venture in a similar business (note: he is most likely involved in Wisher.com, together with Ferran Moreno of Air Bites, both ventures are obviously all about WiFi). I don't get the point why Mike is being accused working for an alleged competitor while he is very open about it. Of course, everyone needs to be aware of the fact that he might have interests in dissing FON but as long as he clearly disclaims it (which took him a while as you see here) I think this is ok. He has the right to comment on whatever he wants and as long as it is on his own blog I don't think it is unethical. The problem I see is, that it has nothing to do with FON and FON's potential anymore. Plus, you can't accuse Martin, the CEO of FON of not being pessimistic about it. Sure, he is as much biased as everyone who either has a strong commercial interest in FON or just believes this one will finally work after MyZones and Joltage have failed (to name only the ones discussed in the comments).

Even Air Bites, NYCwireless and Boingo hardly deliver any great customer experience. If you look at their maps and listings, Boingo returns 115 hotspots in New York City, NYCwireless 144 and Air Bites currently shows 8 active nodes in Madrid (one could interprete the latter as failed). Compared to ca. 50 active FON nodes in NYC (yes, I have counted only dark-green spots to make this as conservative as possible), FON might not appear as the big winner in this game just now but it's definitely no vaporware either. To be honest, neither of these services make really sense to use today. You are still better off just hoping to find an open (private) hotspot or using 3g. Add another 50 T-Mobile hotspots (mainly if not only at Starbucks in NYC) and sign-up for all services above gives you a total of 360 hotspots. And that is a real number now.

The question is will FON ever be what it claims to be or will any new WiFi network finally deliver ubiquitous WiFi at all? One main factor is where foneros put their router. In case of NY again, it wouldn't make much sense to put up a router anywhere but right at the window facing the street. This is hard to get control of. Maybe the new La Fonera should have had mashing functionality built in right at the start, like the Meraki Mini? Sure, this would have helped but obviously the current business and incentive model wouldn't work with meshing as you would need to distinct between those who share their broadband they are paying for and those who pass on WiFi using their node as a repeater. FONs approach in Europe where they give away routers to people that live right by busy places is going into the right direction, I think. The same applies to the East Village project in Manhattan which unfortunately has not reached the critical mass yet. But this is rather a matter of time and marketing/ PR money then the wrong strategy. I personally agree with critics that don't see where the 500k cash burn rate goes at the moment and I guess FON could probably do better here and there. But FON is far from having failed and given the time on the market/ real roll out ratio, FON probably is in better shape as it appears to many.

Update: $5 La Fonero also for registered Foneros September 23, 2006

Thanks to comments on my last post I checked the FON online store again and it's true: you can order a $5 La Fonera even though you are already a registered Fonero (I had purchased the Linksys before). Including shipping and tax total costs are $14.10. They expect to deliver within 3 weeks. I have ordered mine last night and keep you posted as soon as it arrives.

A couple of days ago I received an email from FON promising us Foneros a "La Fonera in a very special promotion (including a surprise)". This said, I am going to hang on in until then as I may save a couple of bucks and I am also really curious what the surprise will be like. Sure, I will keep you guys posted.

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.

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.