2006 7
Yesterday´s Announcement
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in Fon with No Comments
Got the initial figures. They are amazing. We made more foneros in one day, yesterday, than since we started the company. As of last night we had close to 9000 registered foneros. To give you a sense of what this is the largest wifi hotspot networks in the world have around 25,000 hotspots. We got 5000 registrations in one day and sold over 3000 fon routers. Our plan for 2006 is to be the largest hotspot network in the world. We are getting there. I take an opportunity here to thank the Spanish FON team, to thank Janus and Niklas from Skype, to thank the Google team, especially Megan and Christopher, to thank Mike from Cisco, Danny from Index Ventures, Mark and Mike from Sequoia, to thank our American advisory board for all the tough yet constructive criticism, to thank the blogosphere whose comments both positive and negative help us be a better company, and to thank all of those who became foneros and believe that a global, unified wifi signal can be of great benefit to all. THANK YOU!!!
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No Comments
Ari on February 8, 2006 ·
Loking forward to your IPO!
But are you sure that your business model is feasible in the long run?
I keep on hearing about cities in the US providing free Wifi in public spaces, parks, libraries, etc.
This is a trend that is becoming more and more common as Internet access is seen more as a commodity and brand new technologies like Wimax allow it.
Fon is a brilliant idea but, at the end of the day, you gotta start billing and make cash out of it. And no body will pay for something that might be obtained for free two blocks farther . My second concern is that mobile carriers
won’t sit and see how some outsiders steal their core business. They will react rapidly to provide WiMax hotspots once they sense that wireless VoIP picks up… et voila. I’d rather pay 30 EUR/month for good coverage than 10 EUR for a poor one.
My suggestions: turn Fon into the advertisement arena. Keep access free, but add some ads. Would you mind to hear a quick non-disruptive 10 second voice add during a VOIP phone call if, in return, you could call for free?
Eventually, this is the way how Google is making money.
Ariel (in Belgium)
Benedikt on February 8, 2006 ·
Ariel,
I think at this stage of fon, the tought about where to get the best revenue will kill the idea. What they need to do now ist build a “believing” and true community (kind a like skype) that follows the simple idea of fon. Once they have N-thousands foneros, the revenue will grow by the value of the members and the information fon has about them (thats why vodafones members are more valuable than skypes members). Sorry about my english.
Ben
Karl-Friedrich Lenz on February 9, 2006 ·
As remarked in some more detail on my blog, now might be a good time to tell the numerous opponents of the Surveillance Directive (traffic data storage) if FON is coming to the rescue of the human right to confidential communication or not.
This value decision seems to be rather important when building the “community of believers”.
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gerhard on February 7, 2006 ·
5000 new users a day, that means 1 million users in 200 days – not the prospected 4 years – theoretically .. 🙂
g.