We’re growing really fast in Portugal, mostly thanks to the agreement FON reached with Zon, the biggest cable internet and TV provider in Portugal. October 18th became another landmark for FON, when we officially launched a WiFi density project in Campo de Ourique, a district in Lisbon with its own unique atmosphere. Without being too touristy, Campo de Ourique is bustling with cultural and commercial activity, and has succeeded in becoming something like a dynamic mini city within Lisbon itself.

Unlike Chueca WiFi, which is a density project created with great effort by FON, in “ZON@FON em Campo de Ourique” we have been able to experience the efficiency and speed of collaborating with a partner like ZON; in less than a month, the project has grown to include 225 hotspots, to date. We can now say that practically 100% of Campo de Ourique is covered with WiFi through ZON@FON (here you can see the evolution of the coverage).

Since the goal of covering the whole district with ZON@FON connections has almost been reached, we now want to focus on promoting the usage so that more and more people get to enjoy the service. Now after the launch of the project, we are starting giving incentives for using the network such as signing up commercial establishments to become contributors, which will help us promote the project and offer information through posters, brochures, connection passes etc. Also, in the next days we will launch the webpage of the project.

The launch was supported by street actions in el Jardim da Parada, a family park, and the WiFi epicentre of Campo de Ourique. Dozens of children participated in a WiFi contest where they connected to several ZON@FON hotspots spread out in the district, using “Magalhaes” PCs, which is a type of Portuguese manufactured OLPC. There were also giants on stilts that announced that they themselves were ZON@FON Hotspots, segways completely revamped with the brand, information points, gifts for the children and the elderly, etc.

Follow Martin Varsavsky on Twitter: twitter.com/martinvars

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fonero on October 22, 2008  · 

well, congrats. but, the same has been told to us for Blanquefort, Malaga, Lleida. Have a look @ FONmaps. 2/3 of these are inactive routers today; so this seems not to be a successful and sustainable approach. It has to be proofed, that Lissboa is another a sepcial case.

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Tamás Locher on October 22, 2008  · 

Hello Martin,

it’s rellay really impressive what you are creating here. I have no doubt about the success of FON as a whole.
Keep on rollin’

Cheers,
Tamas

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Martin Varsavsky on October 22, 2008  · 

@ fonero:

Yes and also Barcelona is still not implemented. But many others are that were not blogged happened.

B-Side on October 22, 2008  · 

Good news fot the portuguese… Spaniars would love such an agreement like this with one of their major ISPs. ¿Did you talk to ONO? Both names would combine perfectly “fONO”

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Paul RODTS on October 23, 2008  · 

After their co-operation : maybe our Portugese friends deserve their own Fon Blog in their own language ? All languages are important…..

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Martin Varsavsky on October 23, 2008  · 

@ B-Side:

fono indeed!

Martin Varsavsky on October 23, 2008  · 

@ Paul RODTS:

yes, they should have their blog, we will see what we can do about that

exFonero on March 9, 2009  · 

you told, the whole world, that in JANUARY you will start with NETGEAR routers in joint with ZON ! You remember!????!

numbers in PT shiftet from 1500 to 1550 in about 8 weeks… great??

But this tells us -again- that there is no truth, what you are saying. They just start 2 aquire specialists….

no words,… no comment…

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