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.
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Why are you counting only dark green and not light green? Light green are active but haven’t been connected to in the past hour.
Steve,
I have been around quite a bit in lower Manhattan and I never had a chance to connect to one marked in light green. That’s why I have taken the conservative approach hoping dark-green APs really work. Have to check this myself, though. Will do shortly.
Best…….Olaf
Hi Olaf,
This is Ferran, from Air Bites and Whisher.
Madrid is probably not the best showcase at Air Bites :-).
Go to Bilbao, that’s where we have proved that an average of 2 users per shared line is possible. We have >250 active nodes there.
In this case the model is a bit different than FON since we act as a WISP (we rent the backhaul and install the equipment; btw reflashed Linksys routers with a customized OpenWRT and high-gain directive antennas). We charge 20€ per user. The first one covers our ADSL cost while the second contributes the margin. They are happy because pay half of what a regular ADSL costs over here, while we make business everytime we have more than 1 user per line (I don’t mention all the rest of costs associated to the business…this is just an illustrative example).
Just for your curiosity I’ve uploaded here a few maps with the street level coverage in Bilbao. Not too bad, we have 51% of the overall city WiFi coverage…above Telefonica :-).
Ferran
Olaf, your blog software seems not to respect the hyperlinks…
Anyway, here the link to the maps: http://flickr.com/photos/ferranmoreno/
Steve, light green are active but haven’t been connected to in the past hour… or in the past day… or in the past month… do you know what I mean?.
I am light green, but my FON router haven’t been connected in last two months.
Ferran,
sorry for the link problem - I see you figured it anyways.
Your Bilbao coverage seems to be quite good. I wished you had something similiar to your Flickr images available on your website, too, as according to the Flickr maps you seem to cover more streets. Actually, on your website map it doesn’t look like you covered my friends house on plaza de la casilla & autonomia, according to your Flickr map this corner is covered. I may tell him to check it out, he still uses lame dial-up
I hope to be in Bilbao again shortly, I love the city!
Olaf
Nkieto - can you e-mail me: steve.ross@fon.com
I’d like to run a test but I need some additional info from you.
Steve
Hi Olaf,
Thanks for a balanced summary of the situation, there are a couple of points I see a bit differently, but in any case, I think you have put things into perspective. Some of the comments on my blog (and others) had gone way out of line, in both camps, in one blog they added some personal accusations against Martin of their own, and this I don’t agree with. Honest, direct and hard discussion - no problem.
Regarding the dark/light green debacle - in my opinion, the light green routers are those that have been seen at least once online by FON, be it at registration time, or a few days ago. If we are generous and consider the light green as online, we have a total of 11.488, which means there are some 8.500 routers MIA.
As for the excuse related to old firmware not having the heartbeat, and thus not being shown on the map, I think it is a bit misleading unless everything is explained. FON runs a RADIUS server and DNS servers, which are used by anyone logging onto any FON hostpot, regardless of the firmware version. These accesses are logged, otherwise how could the Fonero view the number of visits to his AP in full detail? If FON has a log of all accesses, correlated to the hotspot where they took place, I am convinced they could know very precisely the activity of each router, not just now or during the last few hours, but since the router was first registered.
Best regards,
Mike
Hi Olaf,
You are right, our maps are really bad…no excuse.
The coverage maps were generated after a wardriving session.
Actually it would be very nice if you could ask your colleague to check whether he gets some signal or not…just for curiosity.
Regards,
Ferran
Ferran,
I gonna ask him. What does he need to look for (SSID)?
Olaf
Anything with AIRBITESxxx
Ferran, what does http://www.airbites.ro/ have in common with your business? From what I know there’s some connection to Swisscom, but I can’t put my finger on it.
Kind thoughts,
Dan Berte
CEO & co-founder
c*free wireless
www.cfree.ro
Hi Ferran,
My name is Pepe (Olaf’s associate in fontastic.org) , and I was wondering what “whisher” is all about….just signed with my email address to receive your news, but I can just not wait so decided to ask here directly.
Cheers,
Pepe
#12 Dan, Air Bites started in Spain with Swisscom financing. I co-founded it 3 years ago. Then it was expanded to the eastern countries (Romania, Bulgaria, Slovakia, Poland).
I’m part of the advisory board although I do not run the operations in those countries.
I go from time to time to Cluj, so probably we meet up next time
#13 Pepe, that must be a cool name to pronounce in New York :-). Whisher is about WiFi sharing. I can’t tell you more at this stage. I hope we will be ready to show to the rest of the world what we are doing very soon. Otherwise thanks for showing interest in Whisher.
Ferran,
, you are very right…whenever I don’t have the opportunity to introduce myself first, that horrible “Pepi” sound comes along…you cannot even think of what happens with my last name.
funny guy you are
Thanks for answering, first of all, you are very kind. Is there any private email that I can drop you an email to in private?, I would love to tell you why I have interest in your new venture. By the way, I moved to Madrid during the summer…..my fiancee prefers europe better ;-).
Best regards and thanks again for your comments.
Pepe
Pepe, you may contact me at ferran@whisher.com.
#14. Ferran, thanks for clearing that up! You’re most welcome!
[…] One of the great features is that you can power the Meraki-Mini over Ethernet. As stated earlier, I guess this technology would have been a great basis for FON as well and would help making the FON network more accessable and spread faster (one could apply for a free router in repeater mode if you lived in an appropriate location for example). Well, as Google is on board in both worlds we see what happens. […]
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