fontastic.org - FON and free WiFi blog

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]

Like this post? Please share and enjoy: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.

You can vote for FON to become your favorite webware. Fon has been chosen to be amongst the top 100 Webware finalists on Webware.com, an initiative by CNET. There are 10 categories with 25 candidates each, 10 of which will be choosen by you - the audience. You can vote for FON here.

Like this post? Please share and enjoy: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.

No related posts

FON innovates tinyurl May 7, 2007

Probably because Martin Varsavsky and his team always need to send these awful long URLs (e.g. for FON maps) they used tinyurl a lot. But tinyurl comes up with rather hard to memorize abbreviations so FON's new approach fon.gs is to mesh up tagging with URL shortening. Only drawback: easy to remember tags are often used already and can therefore not be chosen. Well, there is an option to leave the tag input field blank and fon.gs creates a random link. Just as tinyurl…

Like this post? Please share and enjoy: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.

No related posts

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.

Like this post? Please share and enjoy: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.

It is probably the biggest deal so far for FON having convinced Time Warner Cable to team up with them and allow broadband subscribers to share their bandwidth with passer-bys via the FON network. This adds another 6.6 million potential Foneros to the movement. Martin Varsavsky wrote it took them some time to convince them but finally they bought in to the concept of that there are quite a few "I am rarely at home still I pay for broadband cause I use it for free when I travel" (quote) - users who would go with Time Warner broadband because they allow to be a Fonero. If both Fon and TWC would also jointly market their broadband products whereby Time Warner bundles routers with La Foneros, that might be a real added value and convincing argument for new customers.

Like this post? Please share and enjoy: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.

New Foneras coming out April 11, 2007

During a cab ride in Taipei, Martin Varsavsky delivered a short video message on what's coming up next at Fon:

current Foneros will be updated to have 2 ethernet ports (to improve use with single port routers provided by many ISPs). They will also feature 2 antennas, one for the personal network and one for the Fon net. The updated version is expected to launch in June
Fontennas coming out in May. These will be flat panel antennas to be mounted inside of window frames to boost range to 200 yards
new La Fonera 2.0 will be launched in October. It will feature a USB port to connect a hard drive or memory stick and allow to integrate into Web 2.0 apps via it's own API
for the beginning of next year, Foneras supporting 802.11n standard are planned. These will have a range of up to one kilometer and transmit data at a faster rate (probably around 200 Mbit/s)

That's a lot of news for a short cab ride.

Like this post? Please share and enjoy: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.

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.

Like this post? Please share and enjoy: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.

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).

Like this post? Please share and enjoy: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.

FON: the future of the business model

FON Meraki mesh-up coming? March 22, 2007

In his blog, Martin Varsavski recently mentioned Meraki and the possibilities of FON to add on more mesh technology. I raised the question last year already why FON has not built in meshing features before. Martin states that he thinks ISPs would be in favour of FON's "one to one" concept (you subscribe to internet at home and can use it on the road) vs. a mesh network where it would be more likely that ones internet is shared with more non-paying users. While I think this could be true (ISPs may think that) it doesn't make very much sense because with meshing you would just reach more Foneros but to surf for free you would still need to be a Fonero (either Linus or Bill in which case it's not free then). So meshing doesn't open a WiFi network to more "free" users (free as in beer) but just to more paying or sharing members. I don't see a problem in that. Once an ISP has bought FON's concept, meshing just makes more sense because it spreads it faster, right? Anyways, it seems that FON is going to implement meshing features in upcoming routers or even firmware updates (see comments in Martin's post).

Like this post? Please share and enjoy: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.

Last week one of our close friends of Fontastic.org was spotted in a Fontastic T-Shirt during a conference held on Second Life. The conference "Second Life as a business platform" took place on Novatierra island (see here) and at the Faculty of Information Technology of the UPM in Madrid. I guess we are the first FON blog on Second Life, then, no?

Like this post? Please share and enjoy: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.

Just a quick note: FON.com now features a "What's new" section. That's all - have a great day (and keep warm if you're also trying to survive NYC winter).

Like this post? Please share and enjoy: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.

Linksys router only $19 on FON.com

Details on FON Liberator by Accton March 2, 2007

According to Mike Puchol of tech.am, this might be the new FON Liberator. As Martin Varsavsky announced earlier last year, the FON Liberator will feature a USB port to attach harddrives and be able to download files withouth the need of a computer connected and be able to access those files remotely. It appears that the Accton MR3203A does exactly this. It has a build in FTP server and Bit Torrent client (featuring FTP and HTTP downloads). Just like the La Fonera, the router has two SSIDs, one public (FON) and one private. Unlike the La Fonera the new Liberator seems to have a LAN passthrough.

Like this post? Please share and enjoy: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.