While we still can’t disclose from whom FON got an order for 400K Foneras, I can say that it is a mobile operator. Mobile operators are realizing that FON is their amigo. That, for them, it’s great when customers who paid their monthly 3G fees offload their traffic onto a WiFi network. More to follow.
Follow Martin Varsavsky on Twitter: twitter.com/martinvars
Posted on FON, General | 2:25 am
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I hope it’s in Spain and that means cheaper phone bills!
Wicked!
Wish is in Tokyo! or Spain. Anyway Congratulations!
Wow! Will it be Fon branded routers or Fon enabled firmware embedded into the mobile operator branded routers?
Wish is in Spain!
Felicidades por la operación.
Congratulations… That is a great result. It shows that the 3G networks are really under pressure and are finally accepting that after the billions that went into building their networks they are not prepared for the mobile data revolution
Congratulations! I agree with previous comment. Cheers!
Gotta be an operator in Europe with iPhone IMHO as those guys feeling the most pain.
my ten bucks are on O2 UK??
I wish it was Vodafone. Even both company names match fine together.. 
DD
Congrats Martin, I hope someday Fon gets here to Peru too….
You were visionary about sharing wi-fi….And your quality of being patient and to adapt pays off now..Every success is the culmination of a series of many sleepness nights….Hope you sleep good next few years ! You earned it….
You are correct! To succeed you must fail many times,
perhaps your whole life……
Seguro que es un operador hispano.
Suerte!
Congratulations Martin, it seems 2010 will be a great year.
Esperemos que sea algun operador español… !!!! Enhorabuena!!!
Alguien sabe como esta el tema del fonpeek?? no ahi ni una noticia sobre el?
Well done Martin!!! this is a great deal, and a great way to start 2010. Congrats!!
Can you at least disclose the country where it’s going to be used at?
I hope this will put some pressure on the R&D team to make the wifi working and stable. Because original firmware and latest release candidate isn’t at the moment.
I use foneras all the time and everywhere. I also see the customer care reports and wrote in my blog that our first software releases were buggy and apologized for them. But now I don’t see any major bugs. Can you elaborate?
I can’t disclose the country sorry. But we will.
Hopefully not your whole life!!
Well I see WiFi as complementary to 3G networks. 3G networks can cope with mobile traffic but not with stationary traffic, traffic from your home, your office which is much greater than when you move around. And that is where WiFi is of great help. Also for the mobile operators who spent a fortune for mobile data it means a lot of savings in CAPEX.
This sounds really great. I guess this might be too early for those to have Fem2cells built-in, since the WiFi-only router probably is 5x cheaper to make at this point.
I really am sometimes impressed with some of the cool deals we can get in certain European countries for data-only and pre-paid-only HSDPA data access. For example Three is pretty good in Denmark and Sweden, through oister.dk or cbb.dk we can get 10GB monthly bandwidth for 20€ per month just pre-paid no contracts.
If the FON router costs only 20€ to mass manufacture, it would absolutely totally make sense for someone like Three to approach you and order 400 thousand units of the basic Fonera. And then what they should do is offer free routers to all of their customers. In exchange for the customer installing the router on their home ADSL/Cable/Fiber connection, the customer could for example get 10GB HSDPA + Unlimited free WiFi on FON. And the Voice/SMS customers could get cheaper voice calls when they are on WiFi. And all the mobile phones could get firmware updates that let them automatically roam over to FONspots when they are available.
Which they should then upgrade later to Fem2cells and later to Fem 2 White Spaces.
great,
maybe it is an idea to use some of the money that this deal generates on hiring real developers that make the firmware work as it should
(including 3G) instead of playing with their hobbies and adding more and more gadgets noone asked for?
Do you have any contact with the workfloor still?
please read the support requests on developement digest on fonosfera regarding Gor did you ever see http://boards.fon.com/viewtopic.php?f=34&t=6644?
3G simply wont work, at least not through a hub, and if you want to use any of the gadgets you might want to connect some kind of storage, right?
Hi Martin
Congratulations on the continued rise of FON. I have been a supporter since day one. Sadly, however, I must lend support wouter’s comment about the stability of the Fon 2.0n. I pre-ordered one, to replace older Wifi setup (including older Fon plus accessories).
Sadly, my Fon 2.0n has never been reliable. I keep up to date on all the Fon boards, tried the RCs (Rudolph was in fact more stable in my experience). All to no avail and frustratingly familiar network failures. After many many hours of tinkering and geek bashing from my wife, I have removed the router and boxed it. (It wasn’t stable in isolation and interfered within a multiple Wifi signal environment.)
I hope the severity of my issues are isolated.
Please consider my purchase of the 2.0n a donation to the cause. I’ll keep in touch to see if they fix the issues and might give it a try again then. Just don’t tell my wife!
“I use foneras all the time and everywhere.” … I’d like to see your FON visitor listing anytime to see that…
“I also see the customer care reports” … do you also get the statistics of how many have been answered within 48h before being autoclosed? most if not all people tell the only response is the automated response…if they get a response it’s to go ask the developers on http://www.fonosfera.org... and they quietly left the building in december…
“But now I don’t see any major bugs. Can you elaborate?” … well last weekend I took a boxed fonera 2.0n …connected it… tried to surf to 192.168.10.1 … I got a black/white webpage… looks like CSS file was missing… in the end I was able to find out how to upgrade from 2.2.6.0 to 2.3.0.0 … but I do miss the auto updates from fonera 1.0 times that would fix these on the spot as soon as it was connected to the internet… You should never save on QA …
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This is the year in which Europe will either fall apart or emerged stronger. I give it 75% that it emerges as a stronger union but the risk of collapse is still there. Germany has the key to solve the problem because of the size of its economy, its saving rate and its export volume. Germany has to decide on whether it continues to transfer some of its wealth in order to create markets for its exports or it let’s Europe fall apart and ends up with an overvalued currency and deteriorated markets. Already today it started paying negative interest rates which is a prelude in my view to a huge rise in the DM should it be born again. Tough choice. I think Germany can actually both save Europe and make money by buying underpriced Italian and Spanish bonds and selling them after stabilization. It can do what the FED did with many financial institutions, make a profit by providing much needed liquidity at a critical time.
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From Fon – Arriva un ordine per 400.000 router Fonera - January 19, 2010 10:52 am - #
[...] si ignora anche da quale paese provenga l’ordine. Ecco il post in lingua inglese apparso sul blog. While we still can’t disclose from who Fon got an order for 400K Foneras, I can say that it is a [...]