The Fon Maps are beginning to look better. Before, with us showing only the last 20 foneros we could not get a sense of community being built. Now we are showing the last 100 and if you refresh the screen as you zoom in you see more and more foneros. We still have a long way to go but the improvement is a good start.

Blackberries owe their success to the concept of push e mail. Basically what Blackberries do is they obtain and buffer your e mail in a their servers, and then compresses and send you a simplified version of your messages over very thin pipes…in the air. And while the messages get to you with some delay you don´t notice cause they are there when you want them. Now that companies such as Fon´s marketing partner Jazztel have launched TV services I wonder if it´s not time that these ISPs “blackberry movies”. I think there´s a great opportunity for ADSL providers to sell movies on demand by buffering the most popular movies in their servers and stream compressed versions of them to users on demand in exchange for payment. Movie streaming is much easier to provide if buffered at the servers of an ISP that is close to the customer than at a random server farms around the globe. Movie studios are concerned about illegal movie downloading. Prosecuting movie downloading sites is a possibility but how about competing with them with a much better service? I am sure that at least some people would trade waiting for days using bit torrent and not having to use precious space in their hard drives in exchange for the instant gratification of good quality movie streaming. Especially if the offer is bundled as part of a monthly offering, say 45 euros a month for internet, TV, free phone calls and up to 10 movie streams per month, and especially if it can then be taken around in a wifi enabled video watching device such as a wifi video ipod.

Below is a copy of the daily reports I get on new foneros around the world. For a while Spain and USA have been going neck to neck as the first two fonero countries. Yesterday it was exactly the same amount of foneros per country. Unfortunately we are still not ready with our map software. At Fon we show some access points but not all. We also have found out that the system that will show registered foneros in yellow and active hotspots in green is not as easy to develop as I thought. We will have it ready only by October 1st I am sorry. Basically what we need to be able to do is constantly query all access points and send the data on the active ones to the maps. Easy to say, hard to do. But Jose Antonio Arribas is doing an fantastic job managing our technical development, we went from 4 people in software and systems to 28 and between now and Oct 1st we will have great maps and many other improvements. We are also working very hard on the design of our own brand of routers. We should also have those available by Oct 1st. In the meantime the Linksys and Buffalo that foneros can buy in shops and reflash or from us Fon Ready are an excellent product.
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Fon generated tremendous interest in Japan. We are now looking for an energetic fonero to manage our Japanese operations. What do you need to be a leader in the Fon movement? First of all you have to LOVE the internet, be very familiar with it. Secondly you need experience in communications over the internet. Fon is spread mainly through routers. Fon´s objective now is to place as many routers as possible in Japan. We are going to manufacture our own routers and we will be able to introduce them in Japan at 2500 yen, considering all the special web 2.0 features that these routers will have they should sell very well over there and help spread the Fon movement. The candidate will report to Joichi Ito.

Last month I offered some free routers to foneros who sent us pictures showing us they lived on busy streets.

Here´s a list of the names and countries of the winners and their photos.

I decided to extend this promotion. So if you live anywhere in the European Union where you face a busy street and would like to become a fonero, send FON an e-mail with the view from your window (we will publish the best pictures) and your address and Fon will likely ship you a free wifi router. The offer is valid for the first 100 request and you can send your picture until 12th.

Lately at Fon we have been thinking of how to spread the Movimiento Fon inside the web sites of Skype, Google, eBay, Microsoft and Yahoo. Google, eBay, and Skype are our partners and Yahoo and Microsoft are not but Microsoft and Yahoo sell advertising and we could think of advertising. In partner sites Fon does not need to appear as advertising, it can appear as a recommendation in a sign up process for example. When they ask what type of internet connection you have they could say, do you have WiFi? Would you like to share it? Or for example we now appear at OpenBC the most productive business community web site in the world in their downloads. At Fon we have never advertised so far and we already have over 33,000 foneros. We are now the largest WiFi community in the world but we have been so far only present at Fon and at OpenBC. Even T Mobile only has 21,000 hotspots. But now that we are so big we also realize how small everyone is in the WiFi world. We are going to need a million foneros around the world to be a reliable service. With a million foneros we will begin to have a WiFi network that will rival the 3G networks in coverage and will beat 3G in throughput. Plus it will be free to all the wifi donors and affordable, say $2 per 24 hours to those who don´t donate. Still we must find clever way to collaborate both with our partners at Skype, eBay and Google to promote the movimiento and mabe advertise in big web sites. We are also thinking of Technorati, the main reason here is not scientific, is that we love Technorati at Fon and overall the blogging community has been very supportive of our movimiento.

Among other things at Fon I have been in charge of our marketing since we started. Our marketing so far has been pretty unique, not a cent spent in advertising, almost no PR, designers send us stuff and if we like it we pay and use it, we also have an in house designer. But now that we have become the largest WiFi community in the world and have presence in China, Korea, Japan, USA, UK, Germany, Sweden, Netherlands, Italy, Spain, Argentina, Israel, France, and other countries I wonder if it´s not time that we hired a marketing manager based in Madrid. Qualities? Experience managing a web site of over 300K unique visitors per month would be important. Knowing about how to promote stuff on the net would be essential. And of course, most important, to love the internet and want to see it everywhere. Are you the person? Pls write to martin@fon.es. You could be from anywhere, that we don´t care. But you must have left one big footprint somewhere on the net.

But as far as I know it is the best. Why? How would you like a 1GB service for 89 euros per month? If I could sign up for that service in Madrid I would in a second. Labs2 is the only ISP who I know for which the WiFi signal at 54 megas is the bottleneck! And now Labs2 is a fonero ISP, we are partnering with them in Sweden.

At Fon we are very, very happy to announce that we have teamed up with Neuf Cegetel, a gigantic French ISP with over 1.2 million true broadband customers. After careful study of the French market and talking to different players there Fon chose to team up with Neuf Cegetel for one simple reason.

They are a marketing powerhouse. They have a great broadband product and they sell the hell out of it! Now what´s revolutionary about this? That in France, as opposed to the United States for example broadband services come with WiFi and they come with a box that is owned by the operator in which the operator can include new features. So Neuf can increase the bandwidth to customers and can flash the Fon software centrally to them so they all become Neuf/Fon hotspots and enjoy free WiFi roaming. Join thousands of winners playing daily at betflix.

Now if you can choose an ISP in which you pay for bandwidth at home and get bandwidth at home or you can choose Neuf and you pay for bandwidth at home and you roam the world for free which ISP will you choose? And thanks to Neuf being so advanced, Fon France does not need to have people flash their own routers or buy the Fon routers, Neuf simply sends the firmware overnight to the Neuf boxes and these boxes start operating as hotspots so all the Neuf customers can then roam France for free.

Soon Neuf will offer wifi phones for example and Neuf customers will be able to call for free in most urban centers of France where there´s Neuf/Fon signal. Moreover as Fon is Open Source, Fon and Neuf invite all the creative French companies to put their contents in WiFi offerings, WiFi radios, WiFi TV stations are but a few of the ideas. Others include WiFi games, and auto connect for Nintendo DS, Playstations, and other cool WiFi devices, with platforms like b-casino.ca showing how online entertainment can thrive in such connected spaces. Explore gaming platforms like 카지노 커뮤니티 to find thrilling games with big bonuses and prizes. If you’re looking for an instant withdrawal online casino nz, you may read articles at Te Pamu Escape.

If you have any ideas for original WiFi offerings do write to me over this blog.