Comments on: My advice to other start up CEOs: the Fon experience

By: Open Source et logiciel libre vont profiter de la crise | Comperience Consulting

Fri, 03 Apr 2009 00:21:57 +0000

[...] pas demain la veille que d’autres entreprises installeront de nouveaux centres de données, car les temps où des investisseurs aux fonds inépuisables couvraient ce genre de frais énormes sont r… et ne reviendront pas avant un certain [...]

By: Martin Varsavsky

Martin Varsavsky — Sun, 19 Oct 2008 06:59:58 +0000

@ Des: The Boingo deal was not executed because of that, we could not obtain any reciprocity for Foneros. With BT if you are a BT Fonero you can roam for free in BT Open Zones, airports, train stations, etc.

By: Des

Des — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 23:53:34 +0000

Fon started out good then extended the services of Foneros for free to “pay per use” companies like boingo and BT. BT customers can use BT Openzone and Fon spots but Foneros whoc share their bandwidth cannot use BT Openzone.

Hmm ? Who has come out best ?

By: El Fon Blog » Blog Archive » BT Halves Wifi Price, Fon Doubles Wifi Price.

Wed, 15 Oct 2008 21:46:48 +0000

[...] hot on the heels of Martin Varsavsky’s regretful announcement, that Fon Wifi will soon be doubled from $/€2 per day to $/€4 per day (he needs to visit [...]

By: Elliott

Elliott — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 19:37:31 +0000

Martin: Is there a dichotomy between USA & Europe/Asia with respect to free WiFi? I haven’t been outside USA since u founded FON. But, as I travel USA in large cities as well as small towns, I always have access to free WiFi. Hotels almost always have free WiFi [most even have several PCs available for free use], airports that I have passed through have free WiFi, as do coffee shops, etc., etc. What was ur experience when u traveled through western USA this summer?

By: Roetzen

Roetzen — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 15:04:56 +0000

Well Brittney, I am glad that at least someone benefits from it. Maybe we have some weird inverse law at work here. Something like “the more you put into sharing, the less you get”. I put up a 7dBi outdoor omni to extend the range. But I never found a useable FON hotspot when I needed one.

By: brittney in brittany

brittney in brittany — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 12:58:21 +0000

I am new to FON and I realize that every FON Spot is not reliable, but I joined because I was really frustrated with my previous provider and I found that FON worked well both in big cities and small villages. I split my time between London and a small town near Lorient, France, so the fact that I was able to find active FON Spots in both places really impressed me. We can debate the statistics, but the fact is FON works for me. Vive la FON!

By: Roetzen

Roetzen — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 12:07:14 +0000

@Martin,

You wrote to Steven: “It depends where you are. In the UK for example if you are a BT customer and become a BT Fonero you get access to all the BT Open Zones hotspots for free and those are at all the key airports, train stations.”

I am not in the UK and I am not a BT customer. I live in a small village with some 15000 people in the centre of The Netherlands. The Netherlands has been one of the first countries to embrace FON. Mine was the first FON AP in this village. Others came and went but few were actually usable. Most were just never there, were misplaced on the map or did not have enough signal on the street. Mine seems to be the only long term stable usable FON AP in town…

By: Kyros

Kyros — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 10:15:06 +0000

@ Martin: Currently there is a trend (competing agressively the commercial Wifihotspots) to have an UMTS USB stick and to buy prepayed data transfer for the case that you’re outside needing internet access. Current pricing here in Austria: only 10 € for 1-2 GB transfer (excluding one-time cost for the usb-stick hardware). Thus keeping the FON price attractive in the FON coreland and enhancing our FON hotspot net’s avalability is the right marketing strategy from my point of view. What’s your opinion?
Let me again ask you to please provide the tools to the community so that Foneros can contact each other via E-Mail – then we can start enhancing our FON sourrounding.
@ clarificator: Hi Peter – see you kept your phantasie for writing drama… ´’`\_(ò_Ó)_/´’`

Regards, Kyros

By: Roetzen

Roetzen — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 10:08:58 +0000

@ clarifacator

Mud slinging tactics will not work here. They are used by people who are running out of arguments and running out of time. Both AustinTx and Kyros bring forward valid arguments supported by verifiable facts. Trying to cover that in mud will not work, people will see through it.