2006 13
Fon in Less Developed Countries
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in Fon with No Comments
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.
2006 11
The World Economic Forum and the Swiss Government share Davos this Year
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in General with Comments Off on The World Economic Forum and the Swiss Government share Davos this Year
Today I received an interesting invitation from the government of Switzerland to speak at a conference headed by Micheline Calmy-Rey, Federal Councillor of Foreign Affairs of the Swiss Confederation. The conference is called the Executive Roundtable on Global Security. According to the organizers the Purpose: The executive roundtables on global security are designed to bring together stakeholders to identify key security themes, trends and challenges. The resulting conversation, we hope, will provide strategic reference for security stakeholders as they anticipate future threats, develop solutions and navigate the trade-offs. This event seemed very attractive and similar in content to what we did at Safe Democracy my foundation. Frankly I was pleasantly surprised at seeing that the Swiss Government had decided to break WEF´s “ownership” of Davos and have an alternative conference to that of the World Economic Forum. The roundtable is being held at the Belvedere Hotel. I am encouraged to see that World Economic Forum does not have a monopoly of Davos anymore. I always felt sorry for the citizens of Davos and the “anti Davos” movement. As an Argentine if there was an anti Buenos Aires movement I would be pretty upset. Unfortunately on that very day I will be speaking at the O Reilly conference in San Francisco so I can´t attend but I congratulate the Swiss Government for hosting an alternative conference and try to shape the world´s view of Davos. At the same time I must say from the invitation that the event looked pretty similar to WEF´s!
Participants at last year´s March 11th Summit (which my foundation, Safe Democracy, organized together with Club de Madrid) have been asking me if we plan to repeat last year´s event. Same has been asked by participants in the very productive Atocha Workshop. We have been debating this issue at Safe Democracy and we have decided that rather than trying to bring 1300 personalities to Madrid this year for March 11th 2006 we will invest in generating an ongoing web based dialogue on how to achieve the goals that have been set by the Madrid Agenda. If you are a participant of last year´s March 11th Summit or if you were not able to join us but do feel that you have relevant content on this subject or on the more broader subject of how to promote democracy around the world do write to Martin Varsavsky I will be pleased to provide you with writing privileges at our web site. We are looking for short articles of around 500 words. As you can see the Safe Democracy website has a google ranking of 7 which means that your article is very likely to appear as one of the top google results when others show interest in the same topic thereby generating a lively debate.
2006 8
FON: I have a dream
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in Fon with No Comments
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?
2006 6
France´s GDP compared to the US
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in General with No Comments
I found a graph on the net that compared the GDP of France to that of the US since 1960. As I look at this curve I wonder how is it that a country in which people work so many less hours per week, so many less days a year as a result of vacation, in which unemployment is considerably higher, in which the amount of years spent working so much lower than in the States and which is frequently paralyzed by strikes manages to stay pretty constant at around 77% GDP level of the US? My only conclusion is that when they work the French must be much more productive than the Americans. Otherwise this graph is a big mistery.
2006 6
OpenBC
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in Fon with No Comments
If you have never seen OpenBC I do recommend that you give it a try. OpenBC is Europe´s answer to Linked In. It accomplishes similar objectives as Linked In but in a more European fashion. While Linked In is free OpenBC charges a small monthly fee and as a result it has a more select crowd than Linked In. If you are interested in doing business in Europe, Asia or foreign related ventures in the States OpenBC is the right platform. Other than that I am pleased to see that OpenBC included FON in its downloads page.
2006 3
Coolprepaid
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in Fon with No Comments
My friend Jack Hidary alerted me to Coolprepaid a new start up he invested in. Coolprepaid is what I was looking for not to get ripped off when I visit the States. Basically Coolprepaid does two things that other providers don´t do: to sell SIM cards without phones and to not only have a very low national calling rate for US phone calls but to have super low international calling rates. International calling had been the last bastion of cell phone scams. With Coolprepaid the scam is over. No more 50c to $1 per minute for international calls on prepaid services. Plus I very much prefer to change SIM cards rather than phones. Soon I will be travelling with FON´s wififons and call for free when there´s wifi but I estimate that we will need 4 years to build a seamless wifi signal in the States… in the meantime Coolprepaid.
2006 3
A Small World
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in New Ideas with No Comments
I belong to A Small World. I know, it´s elitist. Some have called it a “friendster for the VIP Set”. But I belong to “aSW” because aSW delivers. Tonight for example, we were having dinner at my farm in Jose Ignacio, Uruguay with a group of friends who had flown from many countries to spend New Year´s Eve with my wife and I and Ola Alvharsson announced that there was an aSW party nearby. We all went after dinner and the party turned out to be amazing. It was held at a construction site surrounded by antique cars where a very large pool house was being built. There was grilled food, candles everywhere, great music and psychodelic projections. Ola told me that there were people from over 30 nationalities dancing through the night. What´s the secret of aSW? That the people from aSW all see themselves as members of the same tribe, a tribe that many despise and yet want to be part of. Curiously I met Eric, the founder of aSW hanging out with my friend Ola in Stockholm 3 years ago. At that point aSW was only a dream. I liked the idea then, I love it now. What´s unique about his concept is that aSW is one of the only community on the net that has 4 times more members wanting to belong than who actually belong to it. From a financial point of view this is a community that is not so easy to monetize because while each member has a significant spending power the overall size of the community is quite small. At the same time it is the SMALL in aSW that makes it a success. I guess there are cases when small is beautiful…