We are proud to announce that the BT FON Community we built with our partner BT is the winner in the Most Innovative Wireless Broadband category at the Wireless Broadband Innovation Awards 2008. Over 210 entries were submitted and just 7 winners were selected in 7 different categories: alongside BT FON, our friends at Fring won the award for Best VoIP Product or Service and the WiMAX Network of Castilla y Leon in Spain won in the Best WIMAX Product or Service category. You can find the list of all the winners on the WBI Award website. The WBI Awards is a global institution that recognizes leadership and the very best in innovation for Wireless Broadband.
Follow Martin Varsavsky on Twitter: twitter.com/martinvars
No Comments
Paul RODTS on May 23, 2008 ·
Proficiat, Congratulations, Enhorabuena, Congratulazioni,……
¡¡¡FeLiCiTaCiOnEs Martin!!!
Paul RODTS on May 23, 2008 ·
¡¡¡FeLiCiTaCiOnEs Martin!!!
Macedo on May 25, 2008 ·
Martin I just read the NYT arcticle on you and the FON company, and must tell you, the only way the FON network get to grow is giving their users something more than free Internet access when traveling. I would love to share my 8 Mbps WiFi connection in exchange of something, however I live just a few meters from a very busy business Hotel and I don´t feel the trade will be fare, the Foneros at the Hotel will probably use a lot of my bandwidth and will never be able to get my fare share back, specially because I rarely travel. However if FON offers me something more in exchange, like money, air miles, free gizmos, or even a T-Shirt I would reconsider it. In my opinion the best partner you can get right now is me, Richard Branson and some Virgin Atlantic miles for the heavily unbalanced FON hot spot providers. Cheers !
Paul RODTS on May 26, 2008 ·
Macedo, when I read this posting and when I talk with people that disconnected their fonera, I am sure that not many foneros are aware that they can limit the amount of MB’s that they want to share…
Maybe FON must communicate this tool to limit the monthly sharings, more clearly…
( f.e. I share only 512 MB/month because I only have 2GB/month from my Belgian provider )
Macedo on May 26, 2008 ·
Hi Paul, I am aware that you can limit the bandwidth on the FON router, and I have plenty of it to share. However many ISP also impose a monthly traffic quota, in my case it is 40 GB, after that I will have to pay for every extra in/out GB. I know I can squeeze the shared bandwidth to never get that far, however my point is: many of potential FON providers barely travel or need out of home WiFi connection, so why bother using Fonera ? “FON Miles” could be the answer…they could be redeemed in out of home WiFi access or anything else FON can manage to get…even discounted air tickets. Until that I will not join the Network…and I am not alone.
Paul RODTS on May 27, 2008 ·
Hi Macedo, thanks for the reply. I live in a bad weather country (Belgium) and I don’t see many people using their laptops in our rainy streets… So if you don’t travel, maybe you could start using a Wi-Fi phone in combination with FON. If you are in a big city like Brussels, after a while you learn to know the location of most of the FON hotspots in your working area.
So in my case and since about a year, I only make gsm-phone calls when it’s urgent.. I make 95 % of my calls with my SMC Wi-Fi phone (I carry extra batteries) via Skype Call Out or Skype Regular… I don’t have a regular phone at home anymore and with a yearly budget of about 150 euro, I am on the (Wi-Fi) phone for about 4 hours a day (of which minimum 30 minutes daily calls to my friends in Italy).
It’s like power to the people if we want…. with a fonera on every street block, we could construct our own very cheap telephone company with mostly free calls and as practical as using gsm…Greetz to you…
Companies founder on March 12, 2009 ·
Nice point about this, good summary.
Leave a Comment
You must be logged in to post a comment.
Michael on May 23, 2008 ·
Congrats Martin & FON/BT !