fontastic.org - FON and free WiFi blog

Free WiFi at Starbucks for T-Mobile and all May 6, 2008

Although Starbucks loves AT&T now and has discontinued going with T-Mobile HotSpot for their WiFi services, T-Mobile HotSpot customers can still use Starbucks WiFi for the next five years free of charge. T-Mobile customers may only roam for free on AT&T's WiFi at a Starbucks, the roaming agreement does not cover any other location.

For everyone else Starbucks offers 2 hours of free AT&T WiFi per day. All you need to do is get the Starbucks Card. This offer will be available in "Spring 2008".

According to wifinetnews.com Panasonics new WiFi enabled digital camera DMC-TZ50 comes with 12 months of free T-Mobile HotSpot WiFi. The 9 Megapixel camera features a 10 x zoom lens and 802.11b/g WiFi build in. List price will be $449.95 when it's launching next month.

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.

Some Silicon Valley companies want to partner to bring a giant WiFi network to the bay area spanning over 37 cities. Services will include free, payed and business plans as well as secure access for police and firefighters. Free services will be ad-financed, the network is planned to being build as of 2008.

via Engadget

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.

Free calls, Skype and SIP on an iPhone

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.

We have reported on this first in October last year and today Mike Puchol and Ferran Moreno launched their free WiFi start-up Whisher (backed by Swisscom and Benchmark Capital). Whishers idea is that everyone should share their WiFi connection and be able to access Whisher APs around the world for free. But unlike FON, Whisher doesn't need you to change your routers firmware or use a special router but rather works on any computer (Linux, Mac, Windows) with any router - just download the software. Plus, you don't even have to share your bandwidth. It will still be free if you are just registered and don't have your own hotspot. It's also more about community: share files, chat and communicate with other Whishers whenever you have access to a whisher-abled hotspot.

Now this sounds all very promising and Ferran is convinced his idea would spread faster than Martins. However, while FON tries to bring ISPs on board, Whisher is clearly not adding any value for them. Cnet reports this morning that ISPs like Verizon or Time Warner Cable are not to be friendly towards WiFi sharers. "We've taken steps as a company to inform our customers that passive or active theft of our services is illegal, and people who violate these agreements can be prosecuted on a criminal and civil basis." says Maureen Huff, a spokeswoman for Time Warner Cable according to Cnet. This will be the most challenging part of Whishers new business at least here in the US.

The social aspect of Whisher might be really interesting, though. It's probably fun to see who is physically near you, to chat and exchange your thoughts, likes and dislikes (well, and files, too, of course). The huge success of social networking sites clearly show that getting in contact with people you have something in common with is an enormous part of being online if not the biggest driver at all.

We whish Whisher much success and hope competition will work in favour for the consumer.

As of today, La Fonera is completely free in Germany and Austria including free shipping. Short term goal is to create the largest WiFi network in these countries. Currently T-Mobile is the market leader with 4500 APs vs. 3000 FON hotspots. Martin Varsavsky just blogged that FON had 1800 orders only today and only in Germany. It is very likely that FON will reach their goal in a matter of weeks or months, the bottleneck seems to be the pace of fullfillment (import, shipping). If this works it could be a model for other countries as well. I am still convinced New York City (Manhattan to be precise) would be an excellent place to push FON as residential and commercial areas (incl. bars, cafés, restaurants) are completely mixed and thus chances are much higher you reach potential Aliens with your FON hotspot.

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

The Wi-Fi-FreeSpot™ Directory website is an excellent source for free WiFi hot spots around the world. They have special sections for US and international airports, hotels, stores and parks. Beside a detailed listing for the US you also find spots in Europe and Asia.

Free WiFi for Singapore, almost free computers October 13, 2006

Singapore announced they will offer more free WiFi throughout the island. They will increase the number of hot spots from 900 to 5,000. The free WiFi will offer 512 kb per second and will be free for at least 2 years. The government also announced to subsidize 10,000 computers for needy students (household income less then $125). Qualifying students can purchase a computer for $179.

[via Engadget, MSNBC]

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.