FON is being organized as follows. The central headquarters are located in Alcobendas. Alcobendas is a town close to Madrid that is developing so quickly that there’s no building within a km of ours that is older than 10 years. Fon is so far only funded by myself and as of today is 4 months old.
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I will be in Munich arriving the evening of January 23rd and speaking at Digital Life. Hope to see you there!

Om Malik covers FON today where he discloses that we have been having meetings at Google. This he obtains from the New Google Blog who picked it up from the blog of Ejovi, our lead American fonero. Yes, it is the case that we have been meeting with our friends at Google. Why? Google and FON share one passion and that is for the internet to truly be everywhere, on many devices as possible and at great speeds and that is something that so far only WiFi accomplishes. What did we do at Google? We basically explained to different managers how Fon works and how the movement is spreading. FON is a global movement started in Spain and supported by a software download that allows people who already have broadband over WiFi to contribute excess bandwidth at home (foneros) and obtain bandwidth from other foneros anywhere in the world. So far FON has grown very well by word of mouth but who knows, we may have to buy some google ads at some point. BTW, the concerns that some express at Om´s blog are reasonable and we are addressing them. We will have answers to some of these issues at eTel on January 25th in San Francisco where I will be introducing FON in America.

While at FON we have been able to gather some remarkable Europeans to work with us and support our movement I am just amazed at the brain power that is coming from the States, a lot thanks to Ejovi Nuwere our lead American fonero who is doing a terrific job communicating the FON Movement in the States. Case in point Jerry Michalski who has just joined our American Board. When I look at the exposure that Jerry´s career I realize that the internet is not only built by the tech entrepreneurs building large companies but as importantly by people like Jerry who are essential to contribute, edit, criticize, improve, disseminate, organize new ideas to make the Internet a better place. Welcome Jerry!

While the prices of goods manufactured in less developed countries vary from country to country depending on income, currency strength, natural resources, the prices of internet access and internet equipment are pretty standard around the world. Surprisingly, they are higher in less developed countries where income is much lower. While in America the GDP per capita is $36K per year and the annual cost of an internet connection around $360 or 1% of that in Argentina the annual cost of broadband is around $480 and the annual GDP per capita around $4000 or 12%. Taking this into consideration FON has developed a different model for Less Developed Countries that relies on clusters of people sharing a broadband connection through WiFi. While in Europe, Japan and United States FON´s motto is share broadband at home have broadband everywhere in Argentina for example our motto will be, team up with your neighbors to share bandwidth…through wifi. In order for broadband to have a similar impact on people´s budget the sharing will have to be on an approximate 10:1 ratio. Initially ISPs may be against our model but we will probably prevail when they see that we will work with them, deploy our model in low income neighborhoods and the result will be that more connections are sold. Moreover users will see more value as they will be able to roam from cluster to cluster and will be more likely to pay. In some way we will implement something akin to Grameen Phone but for WiFi.

Martin, THE Martin, had a dream. His dream was about all people being judged not by the color of their skin but their content of their soul. His dream was about access to a life of equal opportunity. I, Martin, an admirer of Martin Luther King, also have a dream. It relates to a newer form of discrimination: access to information, to a competitive education, or in short access to the internet. For 5 years now at projects like Educ.ar, Educar Chile where millions of children were given first time access to the internet we have been working at making access to the educational resources on the internet not a privileged but a right. FON while a company and not an NGO, represents the continuation of my dream: people sharing wifi to provide internet access everywhere. When I look at the United States, the country where I was educated and lived for 18 years I imagine that if Martin Luther King where alive today he would probably be fighting to make access to education/information available to all Americans. Without it you are an outcast, without it you are poor. America is still very far from offering a fair level playing field to its children. If you look at a wifi map of Manhtattan you realize how sad it is to see how access to information/educational resources drastically drop North of 96th street. When I read about Google´s plan of connecting San Francisco through wifi I wonder…why not Harlem? Why not connecting the poorest 20 million Americans so they and their children have equal access to information? When are countries going to be judged by how their poorest, and not their richest citizens are doing?