2010 4
Fon reached 2.5 million hotspots around the world
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in Fon with No Comments
Is that a lot? Well huge companies like T Mobile have say, 70,000, France Telecom, Telefonica, ATT, Verizon, less than T Mobile. But we grow over a T Mobile every month. And we are happy because between you and I, 2 years ago, things looked awful at Fon. Laptops were not able to generate enough interest in WiFi roaming. But then the iPhone came along. The iPhone, that beautiful bandwidth hog. We were also helped by netbooks, Androids, iPods, iPads, tablets, game consoles and all kinds of smartphones. WiFi gadgets are everywhere. Demand for WiFi exceeds supply. And at Fon, together with our telco partners such as BT, SFR, Zon, and others we are working hard so there is WiFi everywhere as an accessible signal. As we like to say, with Fon you share a little WiFi at home and roam the world for free.
Are we happy? Contentos si, but not content. We want more WiFi. We are going for 10 million fonspots!!
Here are some pictures of Fon managers in Madrid I took this afternoon at our “cuartel general”. We need to add those of our managers around the world. Our Foneros. Viva Free WiFi.
Follow Martin Varsavsky on Twitter: twitter.com/martinvars
No Comments
steven on October 5, 2010 ·
Hi,
When I log on to http://www.fon.com I read another number : “We are a community of 1.726.336 Foneros”
When I count maps.fon.com I only find 957.262 hotspots?
Greetz,
Steven
Teresa on October 5, 2010 ·
¡¡¡Esoss fonerosss estupendos!!! ¡¡Sobre todo el del jersey a rayas!!! Madre mía, sonrisas tolrato 😉
iurgi on October 5, 2010 ·
Steven,
number of foneros is manually updated and not always fully in sync. We will take care of that. As for the FONSpots, the maps only show tohse that are geo-located. The rest are not displayed. Additionally, in the UK we have so many that we only show 1 spot per Postal Code to avoid too much overlapping so there is a very low number of icons in the UK compared to the real number of spots. the maps is not an accurate way to count spots but only to have a reference as to where you may find a signal.
iurgi
steven on October 5, 2010 ·
Iurgi, thnx for the explanation!
Ben10, yes we all await other telco/isp’s in other countries to join FON…
Certainly BT is doing well…thnx to their “opt-out” policy…everybody is “FON” unless they stop the sharing…. 🙂
In France it’s the reverse…an “opt-in” policy…and even a dual one … they can become a “neuf-amigo” and only share with other neufs (3million chauvinistic French did) or share with us…other foneros (106.324 French seem to have done this)…source : http://wifi.neuf.fr -> So “Neuf Wifi” is bigger than “FON + Neuf Wifi FON + BtFon + ComstarFon + Zon@Fon combined!!!” … I couldn’t find a number on Free.fr Wifi hotspots … but it’s probably also larger than “t-mobile”… At the moment T-Mobile UK & Orange are bundling their 2G/3G antenna’s….they all use BT’s wifi (and thus also the million Bt Fon)
In Portugal the ZON@FON deal seems to have doubled as well in a month time (16.000 -> 37.000 fonspots!)
In Moskou, Russia also a nice increase in the last 2 months…
Now lets hope on a FON@Telco/isp deal in Spain, Belgium, Netherlands, Germany, ….
V.P on October 7, 2010 ·
FONEROS AT GREECE????
Muclomo on October 9, 2010 ·
It is very impressive to count so many (virtual) Foneros. I’m a Fonero since more than three years and I did not find one (real) useful spot till now !
douchbag.explainer on October 9, 2010 ·
let me explain: Martin is a big douchbag and he needs glasses 2 have right sight. but often he doesnt wear them, so he is making big mistakes and count all foneros double…. very easy
fon es lo mejor on October 10, 2010 ·
poco a poco fon va a conquistar el mundo 😀
muahhahaha
Dawn Lim on October 16, 2010 ·
I am a tech blogger and would like to know how many hotspots and registered users there are in the US and how this has grown. Thank you.
Dawn Lim
steven on October 18, 2010 ·
2000 active fonspots in the USA… and it has halved since 2008 (3800 fonspots)
Only 14.78% of the fonspots sold are being used as Fonspots… others have been powered off or flashed with other firmware (and thus not being used as FONspots)
(Just basing my facts from Francofon…which are using maps.fon.com)
The 2million fonspots are located in the UK… I just came from a 3day “wifi” hunt in London… traversed RegentStreet, Oxford Street, Covent Garden, … I was unable to find a “btfon”… I did found a lot of BtFusion/BtOpenzone/BtBusinessHub’s…. couldn’t connect to those.
Also unable to surf the internet on those TheCloud hotspots…. registrating & pressing “free” didn’t give much…and no voucher on my McDonalds ticket 🙁
The only location I was able to get online for free were there Mac Shops on Oxford & Covent Garden …
Although the Blue Smurfs didn’t like my Nokia phone … 🙂
jallerson on October 19, 2010 ·
BT-FON is our fastest growing network and, as you note correctly, our largest, so I’m surprised and sorry you could not connect to it on your WiFi hunt. This has been a really good year for Fon, but we admit we’re still working out a few glitches, like the maps, and we appreciate your feedback.
Leave a Comment
You must be logged in to post a comment.
Ben10 on October 4, 2010 ·
Too bad there’s no alliance with any ISP in Spain? What does it make it so hard to reach an agreement? If big ISPs in Europe such as BT or SFR see the Fon as a good oportunity to improve their service , why don’t spaniards do?