Today Yuki Yamamura, the CEO of Excite, and I publicly announced in Tokyo that Excite Japan has invested in Fon. The announcement was very well received. Excite’s shares went up 17.4%. I am very pleased to see that not only the Japanese are adopting FON WiFi in great numbers but that the financial markets over here believe that to share a little WiFi at home and roaming the world for free is a valuable proposition as more and more WiFi only gadgets like the Nintendo DS, the Sony PSP and now the Sony Mylo hit the market. We are also very happy to be the first non Sony product selling in the Sony Style shops. As a Spanish company to be received so well in Japan, the most competitive technology market in the world, is extremely “exciting”.

Muchas gracias Japón!

At FON, we frequently meet with ISPs and it is no secret that we partnered with Neuf, so what I am going to say you can take with a grain of salt. Still I will say it. Neuf Cegetel is an amazing ISP. Even if you don’t understand French, you can probably understand their offers. In France also Free has a great choice. Neuf has a quadruple play for 29.90 euros. Flat rate fixed telephony with unlimited calling, internet up to 20 megs, TV with over 50 channels, a TIVO like machine, 9GB of storage, 1000 movies on demand and one of the most advanced WiFi/GSM mobile phones I have ever seen (among other things it plays WiFi TV). If you live in America, you can look at your ISP’s offers and weep.

Many people talk about meshing and meshing can be a solution in some cases, but at FON we opted instead for designing our own antennas that we call the Fontennas. These are the specs.

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Here’s a new way to WiFi enabled cities that we at FON are undertaking in Oslo together with the 4G operator iBand and the billboard company Clear Channel. The basic idea here is that billboards are strategically placed in cities to be highly visible. They are placed where crowds go. And so is WiFi. For months now FON has been in conversations with billboard companies around the world about this opportunity including CBS Outdoor and others. And now we are launching our first deployment.

The problem with billboards is to get DSL or Cable lines to them. 4G however makes this easy. For a 4G to FON WiFi converter, all you need is electricity and that is already available in billboards. So three companies, iBand who provides the 4G, FON who provides the WiFi and Clear Channel, who provides the billboards, have teamed up to accomplish this in Oslo. Now wouldn’t you be more likely to look at a billboard if you knew that it provided you with WiFi?

Here’s the press release.
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