I am spending my holidays in Jose Ignacio, Uruguay. This small village of around 700 homes has become over the last 3 years quite a magnet for sophisticated travellers from Europe and North America. Last night my wife and I were having dinner at Marismo, an extremely original restaurant that is basically a huge bonfire built on a sand dune surrounded by low lying tables where people eat great dishes made out of Uruguayan produce. As we sat down I noticed that most people around us were not native Spanish speakers, a new phenomenom around here. I´ve been coming to Jose Ignacio since 1985 and only recently have foreigners been seen in this town. But as opposed to the typical gringo visiting Mexico demanding that everything be explained in English I was pleased to see that most foreigners managed to make their way through the Spanish menus and order in Spanish. Last week I was in San Francisco at a Japanese restaurant where curiously when you were at the bathroom they would play a tape that taught how to count in Japanese. I loved the idea. An unexpected cultural experience. I think it´s time that we all made serious efforts to understand cultures in their original languages. Being part of Spanish culture myself I am thankful to the Jose Ignacio visitors for making the effort. Maybe the difference between a tourist, a traveller and a visitor relates to their relationship to local culture. A tourist wants to find his own culture everywhere else. A traveller wants to enjoy what´s foreign, a visitor wants to be part of it and in so doing…becomes our guest.

This was a TV interview that they did of me at Les Blogs.

America rules and so those of us leaving outside of the US love to pick on America the same way that those on the net love to pick on Microsoft… and recently Google. On a recent visit to the Valley however I found something that money can´t buy you: decent bandwidth. Allow me to explain, in Spain, or France, two countries in which I have homes, I have 20 megs of bandwidth for 15 euros per month. In America they get 20% of that no matter how much they pay. And not only that, American mobile/cell phone service is pitiful. The ultimate paradox was when I was at the offices of Sequoia and Kleiner Perkins to introduce FON. At two of the most successful and richest venture capital firms in the world cellular coverage went from poor to non existent and the speed of their internet went from poor to pathetic. Many times when using Yahoo outside the States, I had found that their portal, while extremely useful and still my home page, was built to LDC internet speeds compared say to what we did at Ya.com. Now I understand why!

When I enquired about the paradox of bandwidth poverty and awful cell coverage in the Mecca of the Internet the answer was invariably the same. The Bush Administration has sold its soul to the telecom giants: anti trust has been put to sleep. Personally I see a terrific opportunity to combine fiber optic technologies with wireless meshed networks to provide bandwidth services to American consumers who will most likely pay the 89 euros equivalent that people are paying Labs2 in Sweden to get 100 megs both way service.

Yesterday I had Tariq Krim over at my place in Paris. While the purpose of the meeting was for him to become a Fonero and that he did gladly, I must say I was totally impressed with this French entrepreneur and his latest development, Netvibes. Do check out Netvibes. As settled as the net giants are I see three start ups threatening their supremacy. I consider Netvibes as a real threat to My Yahoo. I see Technorati as a threat to Google and I see Gizmo as a threat to Skype.

Ejovi Nuwere, our lead fonero in the States is only 26. Ejovi however has put together an amazing American Board for FON. I just spent two days working with Ejovi in the Bay Area meeting with Dan Gillmor, a few key VC firms, hardware manufacturers and web site companies and I could very well see how so many different people can trust Ejovi.

Right now, i’m in the famous Silicon Valley. The cradle of the internet. I’m having lots of meetings with legendary venture capital firms, with WiFi access point makers and with the giants of the internet. In each one of these meetings, i try out the internet connections that people use here and i come to the mind-boggling conclusion that internet connections here are REALLY BAD. Seriously, people here surf at speeds that we were used to in Spain back in 2000. I am astonished to see that the people who design the most advanced software, websites and hardware, surf at internet speeds not much faster than a dial-up modem. While in the Valley inquired why internet was so slow and I always got the same answer: that it’s due to the fixed line operator monopoly in the US where you have 1 or 2 main net providers per city seemingly colluding. Interestingly, in Europe, there is a lot of competition among fixed line operators and very little with mobile operators. Here, it’s the contrary, mobiles are much cheaper (terrible quality though) but fixed phone lines have smaller bandiwths and are very expensive. Clearly, this is not Sweden where Labs2 amazed me with their 1 Gig bandwidth for only 89 euros.