2006 28
Blanquefort Becomes First FONero Town In The World
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in Fon with No Comments
Blanquefort, a beautiful small town near Bordeaux has become the first FONero town in the world.
The Blanquefort city administration has acquired 1000 foneras. On Dec 21st and they will be distributed for free among the 15,000 inhabitants of Blanquefort who have expressed a desire to contribute WiFi signal to the rest of the people in town and to all the foneros around the world who visit their beautiful village.
To be fair Blanquefort is our second fonero town the first one being Lund in Sweden who is in the process of being “foned” by Labs2 our ISP partner in Sweden. But what makes Blanquefort unique is that it is a city government initiative that has been organized with the help of the citizens. I can´t wait to come over to Blanquefort and see wifi everywhere in action. I promise to show up with my whole wifi gadget collection to try it out (PSP, Nintendo DS, Skype wifi phones, laptop, PDA).
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William on November 29, 2006 ·
Hi Olaf, the Blanquefort project is not a “promise-based” deal. The City Hall of Blanquefort loves the idea of FON so much that they decided to buy 1,000 La Fonera routers that they will give as a Christmas present to ADSL subscribers living in Blanquefort who sign up on their website to join FON and share their WiFi.The City Hall will help the user install and register his La Fonera and make sure it is up and running.
William (FON France)
Jorge Silva on November 29, 2006 ·
This is something great. I can’t express how happy I am for Blanquefort citizens…
… but I can’t express either how sad I am to notice how slow people in Portugal are becoming foneros. I do try to tell people about Fon and the benefits not only for them, but for everyone (tourists, passers-by, ISPs, tech developpers) but somehow it’s not really working. A government backed project would, of course, work so much better.
Spain has thousands of foneros and APs everywhere, France too, unfortunately Portugal is and will always be the tail of Europe. Thank God Turkey is coming along, so that we won’t be the last ones in the list…
Martin Varsavsky on December 1, 2006 ·
Jorge,
We want to do a fonero promise in Portugal within a Portuguese organization of people interested in the internet, who could they be?
Jorge Silva on December 3, 2006 ·
Martin,
I did hear about a FON meeting in Portugal a while ago. I wasn’t there because I became a Fonero AFTER that. If I’m not mistaken, it was co-organized with a university, which seems to be the perfect compromise between a government institution and a community likely to take this project forward (ie. students). As I don’t have any contact with any university – I did my studies abroad – I would suggest you to search for Foneros studying at one of the biggest universities – Lisbon, Porto, Coimbra – and ask them to propose the project to their directors.
Another possibility is to get in touch with our Ministry of Science and Technology, sometimes they back up extremely interesting projects.
And how about associating with spanish telecoms in Portugal? I remember, when I was abroad for studies, when I came to Portugal for vacations I’ve seen some ads for Jazztel. I haven’t seen anything since then, but Portugal Telecom is losing the monopoly – it’s lost long time ago because of their crappy service and high price rates – and there are LOADS of broadband ISP’s in the market. I lost track of them already!
Martin Varsavsky on December 4, 2006 ·
Jorge, we must come up with a good strategy for Portugal I agree.
We want to do a FONero promise campaign in Portugal but we have to find the best way to announce it.
Pete Thomas on December 20, 2006 ·
I live and work in Lisbon – the main obstacle here is that the ISPs still (Christmas 2006!) enforce low quotas on traffic of 4-10 GB/mth(some offer 20GB, but this is still low for sharing access) per month. This effectively shuts out the possibillity of sharing access.
Does anyone know of any fat data pipes available in Lisbon? I have a great apartment (Alfama, just below the castle, so with potential connections to large sections of central Lisbon), strong willingness to become a Fonero (to improve wifi availability in Lisbon) and a budget of about EUR 100/mth. If someone can inform me about a decent Fonero-ready ISP in Lisbon, I’ll happily become a Fonero!
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Olaf Kreitz on November 29, 2006 ·
Would you mind telling us whether this is a “promised-based” deal aka they got the La Fonera for free (like in Germany, Austria and Nordic)?