2011 28
Fon partners with Belgacom
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in Fon with No Comments
Today I am in Belgium to announce Fon’s partnership with Belgacom, a great company with fixed and mobile operations in a country of 11 million people. Together with the largest telco company in Belgium we will build the largest WiFi community in Belgium and extend Fon’s WiFi footprint, currently with more than 4 million hotspots all over the world. But this is not only an important day for Belgacom’s customers and Foneros. It’s an important day for Fon as it shows the world again that some of the leading telcos in the world realize that Fon can help them to provide a better mobile user experience for their customers if they join our WiFi community.
This partnership is also more proof that, as I explain in this post from 2010, operators are increasingly realizing the power of WiFi in order to provide a better user experience and to offload the enormous amount of data traffic that is
congesting their mobile networks. The growth in demand for mobile bandwidth is far outpacing the growth in capacity, with people now spending more time using mobile apps than surfing the web.
Since our first partnership with BT in the UK in 2007, interest in Fon from fixed and mobile telcos and hardware manufacturers has ballooned. In the past years we have demonstrated what we knew all along – that we can help our partners to provide a service which their subscribers appreciate… and thereby help them to reduce CAPEX, decrease churn, attract new customers, differentiate and freshen up their brand image. And today, six years after starting from scratch, we are talking to big telco incumbents in different countries. We’re thrilled to now be working with Belgacom, and though I can’t say specifically with whom Fon will partner next, I can say that this probably won’t be the last partnership we get to announce this year.
Update: here’s what the media is saying about our new partnership:
http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,15194360,00.html
http://www.zdnet.be/news/129013/belgacom-rolt-4g-uit/ for my Belgian readers 🙂
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No Comments
Peter on June 28, 2011 ·
@Nicolas: I work at Belgacom so I’m not objective, but still, I beg to differ. If you compare to other copper networks, I think you will have a hard time finding networks with better VDSL2 penetration/coverage, also outside of the cities.
If you compare to cable networks, that’s another story, but that’s hardly a fair comparison as the technologies are so different.
Tilto on June 28, 2011 ·
Quand verrons-nous la fonction FON dans les routeurs de Belgacom ?
=> When will we see the function in the FON routers Belgacom?
William D on June 28, 2011 ·
This Fon partnership is brilliant, absolutely fantastic. I can not wait for it to become active. Any idea of the dates?
@Nicolas and @Peter I’m a mere Belgacom customer, paying 70 euros a month for a decent connection, TV and – if one day Belgacom actually get it working, the phone that has never worked. When working, the price is ok, the technology is great and well up there with other european countries (VSDL2 etc), but the customer / technical call centre service is appalling. If it were better, i’d probably have a phone working and giving them money through my calls. instead, no!
Alejandro on June 29, 2011 ·
Felicidades.., hoy mismo estáis en los periódicos…
http://www.lalibre.be/economie/actualite/article/670014/belgacom-le-wi-fi-se-partage.html
Saludos
Nicolas on June 30, 2011 ·
@william and @Peter Belgacom is in a position of monopoly that’s why their technology is better than the other belgian networks (which btw have to rent belgacom’s lines in order to exist). From a european pov, the belgian internet market is just : 1 Expensive. 2 Late.
I’m a long time Belgacom customer as well, and i wasn’t always unhappy with their services hope it’ll come back. Anyway, this is great news, i love Fon.
Cheers.
N.
alex puregger on July 3, 2011 ·
@Tito and @ William
We are currently working on the integration of the Fon feature into the Belgacom CPEs. We plan to launch our Belgacom-Fon service still in 2011, but need to prepare well!
@ Nicolas
We at Fon see a lot of different Telcos/ Cable Operators across Europe and the world. I dont know where your personal impression comes from, but I can tell you, that we have had so far a great experience with Belgacom and really feel, that they are the best partner for Foneros in Belgium. Thanks for being Fonero! 🙂
I am sure, that Belgacom-Fon will work great in Belgium!
Alex Puregger
(COO of Fon)
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Nicolas on June 28, 2011 ·
Belgacom is indeed the biggest network in Belgium but it’s at least two years late on the other european networks (i’m talking about the adsl connection, bandwith, etc). Economically speaking this choice is the best, but qualitatively…oh my…