In the States there are many Muni WiFi projects in the works, but few are actually implemented. At FON we now have the first Muni WiFi project implemented and it took only 3 weeks to get it done. This happened in the village of Blanquefort in France.

Basically, it only took the major´s office to buy less than 1000 Foneras and give them away for free to strategically located inhabitants of this small town. Now there´s WiFi practically everywhere in town. In this very detailed video, which unfortunately is only in French (if you speak it and are a US presidential candidate Fon promises not to disclose your identity 😉 the leaders of the projects and various foneros (users of Fon) explain how they went about connecting Blanquefort to the internet via Fon WiFi.

I take the opportunity to thank Jean Bernard Magescas, our French Fonero leader, the rest of the FON team and especially the people of Blanquefort who I hope to visit soon with my WiFi gadget collection.

Fon´s strategy during our first year of operations was to seed the market until we became the largest WiFi network in the country and then, once the demand is there, have our routers sell at market prices and go through retailers and etailers . FON is now the largest WiFi in Sweden, Italy, Germany, Spain, Holland, Denmark, Austria, Japan, Hong Kong and the second largest in Taiwan, France, Finland, Switzerland.

FON is now looking for retailers who are interested in selling Foneras. If you work for a retailer or etailer in Europe pls write to Robert Lang at our Munich office. In Asia where we already have a significant retail presence contacts should be with Yat Siu at our Hong Kong office. In USA and Canada with Faisal Galaria at our San Francisco office and for the rest of the world pls contact Monica Diaz-Ponte in Madrid.

Gspace is a great Firefox extension that we offer that stores your files on the internet using the storage capabilities of Gmail. The problem is that we can´t get the domain www.gspace.com from the pornographers who own it. Sorry!! We tried. But in any case after the pornographic detour if you go to www.getgspace.com you will find us.

I know this sounds hard to believe, but it´s true. I was in Silicon Valley last week, at the offices of our partners Google and Sequoia Capital and this is a fact: the most successful internet company in the world, Google, and the most successful VC in the world, Sequoia Capital, have their executives surfing the internet slower speeds than the average European or Asian at home.
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Here´s Endgaget great coverage of the iPhone. It´s as detailed as it could be made after Steve Jobs launch.
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Americans and Europeans go to Asia and are generally surprised about the small size of shops that sell electronics. Both Europe and America are now dominated by very few small chains such as CompUSA, Best Buy in the States or Media Markt and Fnac in Europe, but for FON asia is fantastic cause we can get the Foneras into retail in a much easier way in the very competitive world of Asia, as they are a hot product than in the somewhat corrupt and inefficient systems of Europe and USA, in which a few mega chain buyers decide what millions will buy.

Not only did we redesign the home page of FON, but now we are doing a major overhaul of Gspace. As a reminder the reason we own Gspace is that when we launch the fon liberator now renamed Fonera 2.0 (cause it helps you upload and download stuff to and from the net) we will give gspace users a choice to store stuff on gmail or in their hard drives directly connected to the Fonera 2.0.
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Wow, just saw the numbers in the Fonero gets Fonero program. In Europe we are giving out only one invite per Fonero although as the person invited connects we will replenish invitation. In USA, where our Fonero density is lower, we are giving out 3.

From what I saw of the first 1100 invitations that went out 492 Foneros who got the invite invited somebody in the first 24 hours. That is great as nobody better than a fonero to want others to be Foneros so they can roam their neighborhood, city, country, world for free with their wifi gadgets and also because they know how to do everything and can explain less techie friends. Thank you!!!!!!!!!!