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The future of FON April 2, 2007

German newspaper Die Zeit recently published an interview with Martin Varsavsky in which he talks about the future of FON. According to Martin his initial intention was not to form a company but a movement. He figured it would spread faster if there was some sort of monetary incentive behind it and thus opted for a "for profit" instead of "non profit" organisation. Asked about the business model Varsavsky says that currently FON relies on revenues from Aliens Bills only (Aliens Bills = those members paying for WiFi) but he would assume that selling routers will be another source of income once sponsership goes down and economies of scale go up. MP3 players or the use of content on the road could be another revenue model in the future, he says. Asked about the next milestones, Martin claims FON to have about one million users and about 3 million as a final goal (one each in Asia, USA and Europe). 

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Comments»

1. AustinTX - April 2, 2007

Bills are actually the members who are *paid* to share their wifi, as opposed to Linuses who share their wifi for free in order to use other Fon hotspots for free. Bills pay for wifi only if they are at another Bill’s or Linus’s hotspot. It is ALIENS who are the revenue source.

Your sentence “(Bills = those members paying for WiFi)” is therefore misleading. It seems like you are saying that there are so few Aliens paying for Fon hotspot service that the signifigant revenue is coming from Bills! You might want to check your news source and rewrite.

2. admin - April 2, 2007

AustinTX,

you are totally right, my mistake! I corrected it.

Thanks for your comment!

Olaf