Swisscom and FON

FON is my company. I own it 100%… so far. I am close to selling 50% of FON to Swisscom. Swisscom is a $20bn market cap telco with some unique features, the most noticeable being that it has no debt. Other than that (and more relevant to me), Swisscom owns Eurospot, the largest owner of wifi hotsptos in Europe. And so far it´s been losing money with it. Now why would I team up with Swisscom to launch FON? Because I think that FON is exactly what Swisscom needs to really have wifi coverage in Europe. FON is a piece of software that turns everyone´s wifi access point into a part of the FON network. And to roam with Eurospot will make us grow faster. FON is my answer to the 3G fiasco. FON is free to all of those who contribute access points, the rest pay to use it: a fair deal. We have not yet launched FON. The official launch date is November 7th in Spain. But through my Spanish blog we have already 697 volunteers ready to install FON in their wifi access points and more importantly, ready to install it in their neighbors access points. And more and more are showing up every day. When FON is up, people will be able to make almost free phone calls, send pictures over their wifi digital cameras, get songs in their wifi ipods, etc. The funny thing is that the FON network has been built, it´s just not connected. Our software does that. And we have many international users ready to download our software as well. FON is the P2P of wifi. The only difference being is that while wifi owners exchange bandwidth for free as if they were songs, others pay to listen!

Sorry that there are so many more articles about FON in Spanish. As soon as we do our Spanish launch we will move on to France, Germany, Sweden and there will be more written in other languages. Interested in working or collaborating with us? Write to me!

• Fon
• Swisscom