fontastic.org - FON and free WiFi blog

Silicon Valley WiFi network covers 37 cities July 26, 2007

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

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]

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.

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.

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.

FON and Germany-based Spotigo announced the introduction of a mobile Symbian/ Windows application that allows Foneros to find the next FON hotspot and automatically login as they reach it. The so called “FON Wi-Fi Connection Manager” will automatically detect the position of your mobile device and show the way to the closest FON access point. Software releases to other platforms are under development, Spotigo says.

(via Heise.de and this press release)

This week GigaOM spread the news of FONs purchase of Gspace, a Firefox extension that enables users to use their Gmail account for file storage (incl. a simple media player and photo browser). Om Malik was so kind to help out as Martin Varsavsky expected his fourth child (congrats, Martin!).

FON also announced their new router called Liberator which is basically a router you can connect an external hard drive to. The Liberator can be used to download files from the internet while you are not on your computer and then use those files (or files you uploaded) everywhere in the world. You could stream music and make it available to friends or everyone you are willing to share your login and password with.

Both products are also supposed to tie in with each other. Users can remotely access files from their Gmail accounts and move to a Liberator-connected hard drive or vice versa. There is a video about the Liberator (in Spanish) here. The device will be available in February 2007.

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.

With Fondoo.net, launched in July this year the UK has got the first FON-friendly ISP (according to Wikipedia) that explicitly allows sharing of bandwidth either as a Bill or Linus. I spoke with Alan Bell today, the founder of Fondoo.net and he said they have had meetings with FON UK and Germany and "they were pretty positive about it all round". Fondoo.net is privately owned and financed. According to Alan Bell, Fondoo is available everywhere that ADSL is available (ADSL is running on British Telecom lines in the UK). The service starts at £17.99 for a 512k residential package including unlimited download capacity. Business packages are also available.

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]