The Foneras arrived in Hong Kong. Yat Siu, our fonero leader in Hong Kong, is preparing a most creative launch in that wonderful city. I don´t want to give it away, but I have a sense that it will be a model for FONeros all over. In the meantime here´s a picture of the ammunition 🙂

In this short video clip I announce that at Fon we launched the Fonera today in Europe and USA, Asia is coming soon.

If you can´t see the video, please try here
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I just came back from Taiwan. While in Taipei I met with the heads of large companies and key figures in the Taiwan government who was confronting serious pressure over some political scandals. At some of those meetings I was asked to give some ideas for Taiwan´s development. This is my view. Taiwan is being squeezed by China´s low labor costs. Many of its companies are moving production to China leaving only the engineering to be done in Taiwan. In a way Taiwan is doing to China what the USA used to do to Taiwan design at home, build elsewhere. But in my view that is not enough. I think that at some point Taiwan will have to do what Japan and Korea did and acquire some key companies in the USA in the areas of web services and gadget design. Instead of just focusing on cutting production costs Taiwan should also focus in getting more access to extremely good creative technology, gadget design and services talent from the United States and Europe.

Many people tell me that all is well with Fon until WiMax kills WiFi and then we will become obsolete. I think these critics don´t get it. WiMax comes in two flavors, proprietary bandwidth and public bandwidth. Fon is prepared for both. If it comes in open mode Fon is already in conversation with our Fonera supplier Accton to make routers that connect to DSL or Cable and send both WiFi and WiMax signal so we can give those out to Foneros and quickly deploy open WiMax. Also a WiMax enabled fonero will have so much more range! And if it comes in propietary flavor Fon will show operators that there´s a new way to grow a network, that living rooms can be more efficient than rooftops.

I am in Hong Kong now meeting with ODM makers who can manufacture the products that FON makes. Tomorrow I will go to meet with Accton in Taiwan, our lead supplier. As I have these meetings I wonder why is it that so many of the products designed in the States and Europe are made in China while few of the products designed in China are sold in Europe and the States. I am sure many people have looked at this phenomenom and have tried to come up with theories. To me it is a question of focus. At FON in Madrid, all we think about is user experience, software, the manufacturers we work with however are concentrated on the art to make the most for the least amount of money. Very different proposition. We need each other.

Yesterday we had a FON Board meeting in London attended in person by Danny Rimer, from Index Ventures, Niklas Zennstrom, from Skype, Antonio Fuentes and myself, from FON, and over the telephone by Janus Friis and Mike Volpi. I have built 5 tech companies in my life, Viatel, Jazztel, Ya.com, Einsteinet and FON and, frankly, I have never seen a board as good as the FON board.
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Here´s my tutorial as translated by Chinese FONeros!

Today I found out that we sold our pass number 1000. Not all of them come accompanied by a letter as nice as this one.

I just payed 10 euro to use your wireless for 5 days 🙂

Pretty cool how it works although I will need to get my own dsl line fast for my work. I saw on your site that you have FOUNDED Jazztell ?? Really??

Anyhow cool story. My name is Michel although my passport reads Michal Tadeusz, because I’m actually polish born with a cool story of my own 😉

Take care and thanks for sharing. Your always welcome for a wine.

Michel