Comments on: T-Mobile vs FON

By: Martin Varsavsky

Martin Varsavsky — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 14:40:26 +0000

Great idea Thomas. Please feel free to design some and send them to us for our approval or else pls bear with us and we will produce some

By: Thomas Kenyon

Thomas Kenyon — Sun, 29 Oct 2006 10:29:50 +0000

I know that FON do not have a sales force, but can it provide official brochures and other literature that enthusiasts can distribute accordingly.

Even if they are only provided as PDFs.

By: Martin Varsavsky

Martin Varsavsky — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 15:06:27 +0000

Roberto,

Yes, we are working on that too, but Fon does not have a sales force

By: Martin Varsavsky

Martin Varsavsky — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 15:01:44 +0000

Henri,

Germans visit us by the millions over here in Spain, now our fonera visit Germany! And yes we are proud of this!

By: Roberto

Roberto — Fri, 20 Oct 2006 16:46:53 +0000

Correction: I meant Aliens, not Bills.

By: Roberto

Roberto — Fri, 20 Oct 2006 07:38:30 +0000

Martin, I agree on your points. But most of your profit will be genrated by “Bills” – and the Bills I know (people willing to actually pay for WLAN access like myself) use the WLAN for professional work. They sit in lobbies, in train stations and airports of this world. Or they drop into a Cafe to do some online work. My idea: Get the shop owners of airports and train-stations – as long as its not forbidden in their lease contracts.

By: Martin Varsavsky

Martin Varsavsky — Thu, 19 Oct 2006 22:52:06 +0000

Roberto look at our maps and see where our foneros are and you will be surprised. Plus Foneros can get special antennas that concentrate signal along streets for up to 200 meters. In any case I do agree that T Mobile has better hotspots on a one to one comparison, as of today they have a larger network and better hotspots. But it is my forecast that at the rate we are growing in Germany with our people hotspot movement that we will have over twice as many hotspots as T Mobile by year end. Not bad for a start up built by the people.

By: Alan Bell

Alan Bell — Thu, 19 Oct 2006 22:25:41 +0000

Excellent stuff, looking forward to similar efforts in the UK.

By: henri

henri — Thu, 19 Oct 2006 21:18:13 +0000

congrats!

questoin: is it a big accomplishment to overtake t-mobile (or anyone else) when one is giving away free routers?

of course, a better metric than # of APs would probably be the number of square meters of city surface covered. harder to measure of course.

By: Roberto

Roberto — Thu, 19 Oct 2006 16:16:44 +0000

What do you do about location quality? T-Mobile is present at train stations, airports, public places, cafes etc. I do not want to sit in front of a unknown house with my laptop on my knees to read my email. I need public places, restaruants, cafes or a simple starbucks to get my online stuff done..