Japan Fonera

FON has management teams in the most developed countries in the world. FON is a global WiFi community that can only be built where there’s broadband, so FON operates in the countries where DSL/Cable/Fiber are most deployed.

Japan is the second largest broadband country in the world. Japan has only approx 2% of the world’s population, but 13% of the world’s broadband connections. But, because we are a Spanish company, we first started operating in Europe, then in the U.S. because of language affinity. Then , one year later we entered Japan.

Even though Japan started as a FON country a year later than countries in Europe and USA, the growth in Japan has been so fast that it is already our fourth largest FON country, and it looks like it will soon overtake our native Spain. This Saturday alone we offered a substantial discount on our La Fonera routers in Japan for only one day and sold 8700 routers in 24 hours. That is equivalent to more WiFi access points sold in one day than NTT has deployed in 4 years.

What we accomplished in other countries such as Spain, USA or Germany in months we are now accomplishing in Japan in weeks. I would like to thank our Japanese managers for this, the Japanese Foneros, and our new Japanese investors Digital Garage, Itochu and Excite Japan who have all done such a great job spreading the word.

With FON, you buy a La Fonera (WiFi router with two WiFi signals), you share a little bandwidth with people who pass by your home, and then you roam connecting to other FON Community members when you pass by their homes. A simple concept that works best in countries where citizens have a strong community feeling. This is certainly the case in Japan.