Ola, our lead fonero in Sweden organized a great event/party for Fon in Stockholm. The co organizers of this party where OpenBC and Skype. The pictures are here. The party itself was great and there were around 700 people there but one thing deserves special mention. I was very happy to be there with Skype and OpenBC, two of the best European internet companies. As we know most of the internet developments are done in Silicon Valley. While that lead will probably stay there for many years to come it is great to see also that we can build technology/internet companies in Europe. When I was at Columbia University in New York City the Europeans and Latin Americans used to work in teams while the Americans would be more inclined to work alone. I hope that now that the internet is mostly about communities that we continue our collaborative spirit over here and while competing we can help each other enough to succeed.

Who is she?

While presenting Fon in Stockholm yesterday, I met a few Swedish entrepreneurs who have very viral projects that are getting a lot of users on the net. The first one is Jalbum and the second one is Stardoll.

While I am more likely to be a user of Jalbum than of Stardoll, I can see why both are very successful. Jalbum is like a more professional looking flickr, less social, more focused on photographers who may want to show their work. Stardoll is something completely different. It´s target market is young girls and it´s about dressing their stars, which appear as virtual dolls. Apparently it is phenomenally successful.

The Movimiento Fon started in Spain but quickly spread to Sweden. The first appearance of Fon on a world wide basis was in Stockholm last november at SIME, one of the best internet conferences I have ever attended organized by my dear friend Ola Ahlvarsson. Why Sweden? Because Sweden is one of the most technologically advanced countries in the world, a country of early adopters. My thinking was that if we could make it in Sweden we would eventually make it everywhere. And after the Stockholm launch we were able to attract the attention of Skype (of Swedish origin) and Google and end up with these two amazing internet firms as partners in Fon. Five months later I am going back to Stockholm to attend a fonero party. I hear that over 600 foneros will be there. Should be a lot of fun. We are now 31,000 foneros world wide and are present in over 140 countries.

I only have the press release in French but from what I read Free (Iliad) the second largest ISP in France with 1.6 million customers has just announced a system that at least partially copies Fon but in a very phone centric way. At Fon you pay for broadband at home, install a Fon ready router and you roam the world for free wherever there are foneros (people who share wifi). With Free their system is that you pay for Free broadband at home and it comes with a wifi router and a wifi gsm phone (200 euros) and then you roam wherever in France there are other Free customers and you use their wifi signal with your phone without paying. So it´s like Fon but only for France and only for phones. Still it´s a great initiative and we are all for it. Free France!

I was reading articles about UMA. It seems that the marriage of GSM and WiFi is happening for real.

Here they are.

During my first day in Tokyo, while I was preparing for the Japanese FON launch, I went to check out routers in the morning and found out that in Japan WiFi routers are coming Nintendo DS and PSP ready. This is how we want the routers that we will manufacture at FON to come as.

In the afternoon I just walked, and walked, and walked, and people watched. Here are some pictures.

After launching FON in Japan with tremendous press coverage, together with Joichi Ito, and preparing the Korean launch with the very able Korean entrepreneur and founder of Inet an ISP, Jin Ho Hur, I arrived in Beijing last night and read this story.

Mmmm, my dear BlackBerry is now the RedBerry?

As I read it I wonder if by presenting FON in China to key local players, as I have been doing in Korea and Japan our orange wifi revolution, we won´t be turrned into a local red version instead. I hesitate, but decide to go ahead and present FON in China. FON always has a risk of being copied, but with the right partners here we hope the FON that makes it is the original FON. The promise of FON, share excess bandwidth at home and enjoy free WiFi anywhere in the world, would be broken if we are copied by a local player. A local Chinese company could say share WiFi in Beijing and get WiFi anywhere else in Beijing or even in China, but not anywhere in the world. And we are now in 144 countries and have over 30,000 registered foneros (people who using our software turn their WiFi routers into hotspots). In any case, FON plans to make generous deals with local partners to keep most of the value in China and make it worthwhile to work with us.

A last comment. Last night when I landed, for the equivalent of 30 euros, I bought a SIM card with enough charge to make many local calls. I hate to be ripped off by Vodafone, who claims that its Passport rate is now a “small charge”, but you pay an euro per call extra sent or received. Now what surprised me of this process is how fast it was and how anonymous it was. I gave money, they gave me a SIM card, they have no clue of who I am. In Japan I tried to do the same thing and they would not sell me the card because I was not Japanese, nor a registered alien.