2006 2
At FON You Stop Being a Beggar….And So Do The Homeless
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in Fon with No Comments
When we use WiFi, we are rich at home. We have our signal. We rule. When we leave home with our WiFi gadgets, we become WiFi beggars. “Please give me WiFi”, we ask as we look for signals we can use. But once you have FON you are not a WiFi beggar anymore. You pay at home and you take your signal through others. You roam the world for free and it is your right to do so, because you are allowing others to do the same at your home.
along the way.
But tonight, in London, as I was going back to my hotel from Janus Friis, my partner from Skype, birthday party, and saw many homeless, I was thinking that because they are homeless they could not play a role in the FON world. But then I realized that with the new Bluetooth FON that we will launch, we could help homeless people play a very useful role in the world of user generated infrastructure. FON will port the FON functionality to Bluetooth and we will put Bluetooth in our FON social routers. We will also put FON functionality in handsets such as Nokia N80. So here´s the idea for the homeless. When a Bluetooth phone (most of them now) meets a FON hotspot in the hands of a homeless person, it can connect through Bluetooth to WiFi and make Skype calls. In this way a person with a mobile phone goes from paying GSM rip off rates to paying Skype rates for mobile calls.
I know I am a dreamer, but I think that this project at FON could turn homeless people with battery powered Bluetooth FON hotspots into valuable parts of the FON network. Homeless people tend to go to high traffic areas when they beg. With FON they could render a service and stop begging. Something similar has been done for decades now with the homeless newspapers. Here two users would contribute a discretionary amount, but they will be experiencing significant savings.
Now, as it usually happens with my ideas, I have to see how to turn this one into reality and sort out the many obstacles we will find
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Gerard Dupin on July 2, 2006 ·
Bonjour Martin
Interesting idea, but do you really think that homeless people have a regular mobile phone ??
All the best
Gerard
Giovy on July 2, 2006 ·
Great post, Martin, but… I think that homeless people have different priorities (like eating, or sleeping in a secure place) than become a FON hotspot.
martinvives on July 2, 2006 ·
I agree on #3 but also:
I live in germany. Here is popular a thing called pfand. When you buy a drink you pay for the drink AND the bottle. If you turn in the bottle you get the fpand back. Some bottles are 8ct (beer) and usually plastic bottles are 25ct. Sometimes you dont want to keep a bottle for a day to get that money back. Its interesting to see how homeless come to ask you for the bottles or get them from streets or wherever. They are not begging! They are giving a service to the community and making money as well. (And me and a friend one day made almost 100 euro in 15 minutes at the end of a party this way!)
Anyway, wouldnt it be too risky to invest money in a router to give it to a homeless? But it could be a good idea. Bluetooth FON Hotspots with batteries and a PEDAL energy generator so they can carry it around and keep it on!
Another idea! What about FON Taxi-Bikes??? Bikes like the ones that move around the city carrying tourists (and many times are parked) that have a dinamo (like the ones to make light work) connected to a battery with a FON hotspot? Those could be located EVERYWHERE and would be very useful for advertisement AND hotspot creating! Would give a lot of mobility.
Also the homeless… What about making them BILLS? Maybe give them the hotspot and since they haven’t spent money make their part of benefit when they resell wifi lower? or not at all. If they get money I bet they would do it.
roy s. on July 2, 2006 ·
you’re sure you’ve not been to Amsterdam 😉 …2 seperate worlds and a badly choosen subject to promote Fon…is this realy about helping them…or helping Fon?
Mike on July 2, 2006 ·
Just as a sidenote…mobile to mobile calls, at least in Spain, are cheaper using most carriers than using Skype (0.22 cents/minute + tax), so I hardly see the point.
Besides, I don’t think many businessmen that can afford N80s or other high-end phones, the only ones bound to have BNEP and other required Bluetooth profiles, would want to stand less than 5 meters away from some of the beggars I have seen (that’s the range where Bluetooth can effectively maintain a high-speed link).
Thirdly, you say “When a Bluetooth phone (most of them now) meets a FON hotspot in the hands of a homeless person, it can connect through Bluetooth to WiFi and make Skype calls”. How is this achieved? How does the call go out via WiFi? Are you going to setup a mesh network for the beggars, so their WiFi in turn connects to this mesh?
Also, beggars and homeless people don’t tend to have bank accounts, PayPal accounts or even…a home where to send a check. So, how would they get paid?
Dan on July 2, 2006 ·
There, there, now! Aren’t you taking this a little too far? Say homeless had flat GPRS/EDGE and N81s, and share to FON, you’d *FON* be making money of them. It’s unlikely those people have any of the above. More so any use of.
But outrageous is willing to milk them in the name of the “free FON community”, “wifi democracy” and such. Statements wich are fine and oh, so cool. But within decency limits.
Kasper on July 3, 2006 ·
Brilliant concept.
Giovy, I think you’re missing the point: with such a concept, homeless people could actually generate some sort of revenue based on the fact that they would act as WiFi hotspots, i.e. allowing them a decent disposable income to spend on eating, sleeping, etc.
Brilliant.
Mike on July 3, 2006 ·
Interesting, but what I don´t understand: I do have a Nokia N80 with bluetooth and WLAN, but how will this N80 become a Hotspot? How is the internet connection made if there´s no WLAN Access point near by? Yet, my N80 connects to a WLAN-router which is connected to the internet.
Of course my N80 could establish an internet connection using GPRS or UMTS but do you know how expensive that would be?
And a third point: I dontß think that homeless people do have a € 500,- phone like the N80…
I would like to use Skype on my N80 using WLAN for the internet connection but right now there is no Skype application for S60 mobiles like the N80 using WLAN.
Right now, I don´t understand your dream.
Martín Varsavsky on July 3, 2006 ·
Martinvives,
Good ideas, thank you, we will look into them.
Regards,
Martín Varsavsky on July 3, 2006 ·
Mike, here´s the new Bluetooth that has a much greater range than 5 meters but clearly not as much as wifi
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluetooth#Bluetooth_2.0
The idea of the Bluetooth connection is that most phones now have bluetooth but very few have WiFi. So the homeless person would have a bluetooth to wifi router with the wifi connected to a fonero that maybe say within 150 meters.
And the calls would go from bluetooth to wifi, through the fonero. The contribution that the user gives the homeless person would be discressionary and FON would give this out as a social mission and not make any money.
Regards,
Mike on July 3, 2006 ·
Martin,
The version number of Bluetooth has absolutely nothing to do with its range. The “range” of a Bluetooth device depends under which power class it is certified – amongst other things such as the RF stage design, etc. On that same URL you post, you can see the three classes, I, II and III, with the approximate range each one has.
Mobile phones will likely never see a Class I BT radio in them, since power consumption is quite high. So, with the Class II radios, you are stuck at 10 meters at best. If you take into account the noise from the WiFi itself, which works on the same band, you could get something stable at 5 meters. I have seen Bluetooth devices with ranges worst than 5 meters, basically their RF design sucked.
Implementing Bluetooth 2.0 is simply a software change in most flash-based devices. If you also want EDR (it’s not mandatory, you can have 2.0 with no EDR support). To put it bluntly, BT2.0 is BT1.2 + all the bug fixes that have come up since.
Regards,
Daniel Garcia on July 3, 2006 ·
Hola Martin, creo que te interesara echarle un vistazo a este post
http://vidasenred.blogspot.com/2006/07/sin-casa-pero-con-porttil.html
Martín Varsavsky on July 4, 2006 ·
Mike,
Skype will have a Skype symbian version in the next few months. I don´t know it as a fact, but I am sure they will, it makes a lot of sense. And at FON we are making on a way to turn your N80 into a Fon hotspot that people can access through Bluetooth and connect through wifi to the internet.
In any case for the homeless the best unit would be a battery operated version of our social routers that will include bluetooth, so people access through the new long range version of bluetooth and leave through wifi.
Regards,
Martín Varsavsky on July 4, 2006 ·
Dan,
I think you really did not get what FON would do here. First of all this is just an IDEA. This is a blog of IDEAS that I blog and with the help of my readers we try to see if they make sense or not. But making homeless people by expensive phones is clearly NOT the idea! The idea is that we invest with them just like we are investing in foneros who HAVE a home when we buy routers for $50 and sell them for $5.
Regards,
Dan on July 5, 2006 ·
Hey Martin,
I regret the thundering comment. The humanitarian side of me bumped in front of the open-mind-towards-ideas-that-might-seem-crazy. I’m in favour of both. But as an entrepreneur myself too, admitedly with apparently foolish ideas, I try and keep away from these sensitive topics. Esp. since I call for a community imput like you do.
So that I make my comment useful here, I think the large number of homeless, their excellent central location and strive to make a buck do get things stirred up, arousing pragmatic WiFi ideas. I do feel you here and you have a crisp point. The downside (minus the obvious badly notorious social status and precarious lifestyle) is the lack of availability for such a device to empower them within FON community. It is not the N80. Nor it’s WiFi as an AP. It’s not Bluetooth (yeah, Bluetooth is great for those Foneros, at home – i got plenty of ideas here). And it’s not a combination of the three.
I’d love to see a new, revolutionary device, somewhat like the Fonera, which will empower these people and give them what community has failed to so far.
Regards
Mike on July 5, 2006 ·
Martin,
Thanks for your time you took to read my post and give an answer to my questions. I really hope your dreams will come true – and of course I would like to use my N80 to place VoIP (SIP/SKYPE) calls over WLAN and a FON hotspot. Hope there will be a FON router with MIMO technique to expand range – and one more idea: The FON routers should be able to handle WDS to expand range. With WDS the homeless people could act as an expander to existing FON hotspots which establish the broadband internet connection.
Charbax on July 8, 2006 ·
Why not equip the homeless with Wifi phones, and they could wave an advert that says “Free Worldwide phone calls, just give me a few coins”..
The homeless could “work” on the street at spots that are covered by a Wifi Fon access point.
They could tell users that the price is something like 1€ for 5 minutes. Or something like that.
The Wifi phone would use http://voipuser.org or other cheap SIP provider, and would be easilly managed by the homeless on two kinds of usage. One is the cheap VOIP-to-FIxline which is the cheap price, the other could be a limit that allows calls to cellular and more expensive countries fix lines.
So to sum up, get the homeless some 50$ Wifi SIP phones made-in-china or made-in-taiwan. Then they can sell wordwide VOIP calls to passerbys within Fon hotspots.
You could also have the phone with a long 5-meter leach, where the homeless can always have the phone on the leach and thus not be afraid the phone user will run away with the phone.
Charbax on July 8, 2006 ·
I posted my comment with additional ideas at the Fon forum: http://boards.fon.com/viewtopic.php?t=1182
I’m sure we could find a chinese, taiwanese or korean manufacturer who can ship decent amount of Wifi phones for 50€ each that can do SIP, Skype, Google Talk and MSN voice-chat. All delivered with the recharger.
Important function is that it should switch modes (between Free-SIP to fixed lines, certain-rate limited SIP calls to special countries and cellphones) only with a password which only the homeless knows.
Those homeless should receive Linus access to all Fon hotspots. Their work to promote VOIP over Wifi is enough. As well as they could be reselling actuall Wifi phones on the street. They could be carying 3-4 extra Wifi phones in the backpack, so when a user looks at the phone and says “hmm interesting” then the homeless can immediately say he has some for sale at 50€ (or more since he is homeless he accepts donations). Profits from reselling Wifi phones could go partly to the homeless and partly also to the Fon project thus it pays for the Linus access.
You could hire new homeless people by giving them the phone, a map of the area for where there are Fon hotspots, some explanation about how to use the Wifi phone, the charger, suggested banner or shirt to wear advertising for the service. And trusted homeless workers can start reselling the devices. Basically anyone with 50€ should be able to start doing this kind of business on the streets.
Jihmmie on July 20, 2006 ·
Hello,
Expanding on the comment made earlier by Mike, having range expansion capabilities for all fon mobile users would be a revolutionary thing. Someone could connect to someone 50 metres away who is 50 metres away from someone who is 50…. until you have a city wide chain of people connected to only one or two social routers. Definitely something to think on, big potential.
eddie tam on November 5, 2006 ·
Martin.. I think your idea sounds interesting.. Although, I don’t think that using the homeless is a viable target market for this technology. Unless you are using the word homeless as a metaphor for a different type of target market, then I would understand. However, if you are talking about those who wander aimlessly around the streets without an auctual home, then finding a systematic solution to handing out these units to the homeless individual would be difficult unless you use some type of finger print indentification – and I’ll bet you’ll have a hard time doing that! If I were you, I would focus in on a greater target market that has yet to be tapped. One that would serve a greater purpose.. How about our children.. If you can somehow incorporate your future bluetooth technology to cater to the communication gap between our children and their parents/guardians (say a bluetooth watch that can be configured to call or page mom/dad at certain location points so that they will know where the child is).. that could be something worthwhile for all parties involved. Think about it.
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gerhard on July 2, 2006 ·
What are “battery powered Bluetooth FON hotspots” ?
Could you explain that a little please? Will these battery powered gadgets form a sort of “bridge/relay technique?”: FON:router > battery FON:Hotspot:wifi-in and bluetooth out> bluetooth Handy?
I am not shure myself