2005 24
FON: the Napster of WiFi
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in Fon with No Comments
I just heard that a journalist from a Spanish television channel said that FON is the Napster of Wifi. Being a Napster fan, I see the analogy.
With FON, a user pays his/her bandwidth at home and can enjoy bandwidth wherever there are other foneros. With Napster, you pay $10 a month and you can download as much music as you want, regardless of where you are. Since I love music, I really prefer Napster to iTunes. iTunes, with its pay-per-song system, works for people who like listening to the same song over and over again. I prefer the variety that Napster gives me. When you think of it, $10 is really peanuts for the amount of music Napster gives you access to.
2005 24
¿Why am I building FON?
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in Fon with No Comments
When journalists ask me why is it that I am building FON my answer is simple. To enjoy a global wifi roaming network and, if I can, to make money in the process. ¿Why do people join FON? Basically for the same reason. To have wifi roaming and, if they can, to make money in the process.
Now, what is so original about FON? It´s not the idea, hotspots as wifi payphones were invented the minute 802.11 was defined. What´s original about FON is that our software is downloaded from the net into people´s wifi access points thereby turning their own access points into members of a global wifi network. Boingo, The Cloud, Telekom, Swisscom with Eurospot or Telefonica have all built separate wifi networks to sell hotspot services. FON turns every citizen into a hotspot provider. Once they do this, they can either be Bills and charge for their wifi or Linuses and not charge but get free roaming priviledges.
2005 22
Andrew Rasiej as our North American advisor?
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in Fon with No Comments
The other day, I wrote about how I had discovered a brilliant North American political activist, Andrew Rasiej, who lost the September elections in New York but who managed to spark a lot interest in his campaign to create a WiFi New York. Well, it just so happens our Fonero leader for North America, Ejovi Nuwere, contacted him and got him interested in FON. So much so that that he’s now considering joining our board for North America.
He basically told Ejovi that he likes the fact that FON is a popular movement and not a big public company, although he rightly notes that we will have to complement FON with a public branch that would be present in public buildings, hospitals and schools.
But the difference between the cost of making New York WiFi and the cost of setting wifi only in public buildings, hospitals and schools is abysmal. The same would also be true in Madrid if one wanted to create a WiFi Madrid.
2005 22
A flat worldwide calling plan?
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in Fon with No Comments
At FON, we’re studying the possibility of coming out with a WiFiFON with a worldwide flat calling plan. We think that we’ll be able to charge 30€ a month for a WiFiFON that can connect to the FON network and to all open WiFi networks, and be able to call other WiFiFONS as well as all landline numbers in Europe, North America, Argentina, Russia, Taiwan and many many more countries. Stay tuned…
2005 22
Ejovi Nuwere: Fonero leader for North America
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I’d like to introduce to you Ejovi Nuwere, our Fonero leader for North America. Ejovi is one of those IT prodigies. He was a hacker when he was young, but now, at 25, he is the head of his own internet security company and Business Week one of the top 20 most talented entrepreneurs in the US.
I met Ejovi at the March 11 conference and i was really impressed ith his ideas on how to make the internet secure and at the same time, more open. When i started FON, i invited Ejovi to be our North America leader and he accepted. And not only did he accept, but he also shared with me the great news that Andrew Rasiej, the political WiFi activist from New York, had joined FON.
2005 21
Thank you Gorka!
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in Fon with No Comments
Gorka sent us this very cool video clip he made last week for the FON launch in Spain. Download it here.
2005 21
FON’s poltical activism isn’t as original as I thought
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in Fon with No Comments
Now that we’re planning our launch in the US, i realised that our political activism to create a WiFi nation isn’t that original in this country. Andrew Rasiej, a politician from New York, has his whole campaign based on the idea of creating a WiFi New York. The difference between FON and his campaign agenda isn’t the objective, but rather, the method. Mr. Rasiej WiFi approach requires a multi-million dollar investment in WiFi network infrastructure. The FON approach aims at citizen collaboration whereby citizens are asked to download this free software, install it on their router and place their newly converted FON access points on their window sill. The other obvious difference is the fact that Mr. Rasiej is a politican and I am an entrepreneur. But if there is one thing we have in common, it is our dream to see a mobile internet for everyone become a reality.
2005 20
Google Polling
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in Fon with No Comments
Before starting FON, I would google my last name and get 80,000 answers. 45 years of life and six companies and two foundations got me to that level of internet notoriety. But in less than 45 days subsequent to starting FON, I went up to 300,000 replies, an impossible number to read (I google my last name and not FON because FON as a term gives many answers that are not related to our company, as it is also a language in Africa). Because FON is a start up and I am interested in knowing what people say about us I would like to have a tool that allows us to POLL what people are saying about FON. The aim of FON is that people download our software and become members of a global, people´s built wifi network. We need people to want to download FON. If somebody, for example, was against FON, fortunately or unfortunately the Google algorithms would bury this potentially valid criticism to the end of so many citations that we would probably not find it and try to correct it. I wonder if somebody has developed tools to POLL Google. For example a tool that gets all the Google answers, then gives them a random order and then looks for positive or negative sounding words. Also this tool would have to work in Spanish, as over half of the citations are in this language. If nobody has done this I do see an opportunity for programs that randomly analyze search engine results as an opportunity to offer automated competition to Gallup and other polling organizations.
2005 19
FON WIFI and ISPs around the WORLD
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in Fon with No Comments
We have been contacted by different ISPs around the world, many coming through our Fonero leaders in different countries. We are making our first deals with Glocalnet in Sweden and Jazztel (which I founded) in Spain to be FON ready. These two companies combined sell over 3000 new dsl wifi connections per day, which means many new FON hotspots per day launched. We are also beginning negotations in the USA and France.
Our strategy vis a vis ISPs is simple. FON will provide our software free of charge to all the ISPs who would like to sell their services FON ready. Why would ISPs want to do this? For two reasons. The first one is that while before you are FON ready your offer is something like “a ton of bandwidth for very little money”, after you are FON ready your offer is “pay for bandwidth at home and roam the world for free with FON” (Linus) or “milk your wifi” (Bill). For the consumer is the same 20/30 euros/dollars per month but the offer is radically improved at 0 extra cost to you, the ISP. Now the OTHER very important reason for ISPs to sell their dsl/cable/wifi routers FON ready is that FON shares revenues made from ALIENS (users of FON hotspots) with the ISPs so you can turn all your customers into additional revenue sources for you, the ISP. And of course the time has come to forget about all the business plans to build a hotspot network. The largest hotspot networks in the world have less than 20,000 hotspots. With the sales of Jazztel and Glocalnet and a few other ISPs plus the spontaneous downloads that started this week at our site, we can have more FON hotspots in a few months than T Mobile, Boingo, The Cloud, etc.
FON and its ISP partners will be magnets for wififons applications, for Nintendo, Sony wifi devices, digital cameras with wifi, mp3 players with wifi, etc. It´s time to build the global mobile internet. First with wifi and later, when available, with wifi/wimax routers at people´s homes. If you are an ISP we can get you started in a week. Please contact me at martin@fon.com to get an information package.
2005 18
¿Can Politics be more Competitive than Business?
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in Fon with No Comments
At FON we are using the tactics of democracy in business. We are, for example, planning to run city wide elections among foneros to select our city managers instead of going to headhunters to find us the right person. Also at FON, at least so far, we don´t advertise and we don´t have a PR firm. As in the world of politics, at FON we speak, or in our case, we blog.
Now, as I look further into the political process of well functioning democracies (yes, they do exist!) I am surprised by one finding. Democratic politics seem to produce more competitive behaviour than business practices. Take, for example, the case of mobile phone pricing in Europe and the obvious collusion that exists among the three to four leading operators in each country on fixed to mobile rates and on roaming rates. At the same time, compare this monopolistic behavior, so prevalent among three to four players per country, to the tremendous competition that exists on almost every issue between Labor and Conservatives in the UK or between Partido Popular and PSOE (the socialists) in Spain.
Why is it that two political parties can behave more competitively than three to four mobile phone companies? The answer, in my view, lies in the different types of monopolies that politics and business creates. Democratic politics is in a way a quasi monopoly on government…that is temporary. Therefore you either win and have almost all the power (Aznar before the last election in Spain) or lose and have practically no power (Aznar now). In this type of scenario, competition for obtaining the monopoly right to power is fierce. But when companies can do well colluding, each one making huge profits and dividing the market, the number of players is less likely to have an impact on monopolistic behavior. As a result, we have an incredibly non competitive per minute pricing in the mobile phone world in Europe. And this is but one example in which corporate behavior leads to monopolistic practices. There are many others.