2006 28
FON to Raise Prices for Foneras
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in Fon with No Comments
For a few months we have been selling Foneras for $5 or 5 euros or in some cases we have been giving them away to highly commited foneros who sign the “fonero promise” and agree to either leave their foneras on at all times for the benefit of the community or to pass the fonera to another fonero. But Foneras cost us around $28. Because we have been very successful in seeding the Fon movement we are planning to end the subsidies and raise our prices to $29.95 in the States and 29 euros in Europe by the end of next week.
2006 28
Fonero Promise in Germany
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in Fon with No Comments
As you know, a week ago we offered a new way to get the Fonera in Germany in which basically if a German FONero promised to keep his Fonera on we would send it to him/her for free. Our objective here was to quickly get enough router orders to be the number one WLAN/WiFi (same thing in Germany they call it WLAN) network in Germany.
Well, I have good news and bad news to report. The good news is that the offer was widely successful and that we got over 6000 orders in a week (our target was 4500 which is the number of access points reported by T Mobile) of which the first 1000 shipped already. The bad news is that we are quickly running out of routers and that in 6 more days (next Friday at midnight) the offer ends and after that we will charge 29 euros per router (shipping and VAT included). Same is true for Austria.
2006 28
FON in North Korea? So Far More FONeros There Than in China!
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in Fon with No Comments
Who is the totally unexpected Fonero country of the last days? North Korea!!!
SORRY after posting this I did more research as I found this information hard to believe and discovered, thanks to Jin Ho Hur´s help, that actually many South Korean Foneros where wrongly choosing North Korea as a country choice!!! We actually have no foneros in North Korea…as expected.
In any case the rest of the post still has interesting information as to where foneros are around the world.
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2006 27
Most Innovative Mobile Product
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in Fon with No Comments
FON won the “Most Innovative Mobile Product” prize given out in Sweden, because we made Lund the first FON town!
This is an award presented every year to companies operating within the Swedish mobile industry. Among hundreds of incoming suggestions, an esteemed jury chooses the award winners in different categories and this year the winner in the category “Mobile initiative of the year” went to FON.
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2006 26
Me and my WiFi Gadgets
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in Fon with No Comments
In this video I give a very personal review of the Sony Mylo, Nintendo DS, Sony PSP, Nokia N80, Nokia E61, Nokia N770, Qtek minicomputer/phones, and our very own Skype Fon.
2006 25
15 Million Americans Moving to Mexico
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in General with No Comments
There´s a boom in the retirement industry in Mexico. Presently, there are around half a million Americans retiring in Mexico. They do this because they get great weather, nice people, and with the same income they can live much better lives.
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2006 25
How Can I Be a Non Religious Jew?
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in General with No Comments
Most people believe that being Jewish is believing in Judaism: a religion. But this is not always the case. I am a Jew and I am non religious and there are many of us. So if I don´t believe in religion how can I be Jewish? I think the explanation lies unfortunately in that it is not only Jews who define Judaism, in my case, and in the case of many other Jews, Judaism was not only defined by sharing a common culture and history with other Jews but by the attacks of anti semites. In the case of Argentine Jews as myself there were three waves of attacks: the nazis, the Argentine military neo nazis and Hezbollah that greatly defined our identity.
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2006 24
The Current State of WiFi in Smartphones
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in Fon with No Comments
My blog is not a blog of links, but a blog of my ideas and activities as a company builder. Still, I just read this article at the Technology Review that Bob Stumpel, our FONero leader in the Netherlands, sent to me and it is right on the state of WiFi.
Truphone is especially interesting. And so is this announcement by T Mobile in the States whereby dual wifi gsm phones will connect for free in their hotspots mostly at Starbucks.
2006 24
FON Router Design
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in Fon with No Comments
This is how we started
This is where we are now
And on top of our mass production of Foneras, we are thinking of also producing small runs of design routers such as this one
2006 24
Youtube vs Google Video, FON vs Google WiFi
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in Fon with No Comments
Here´s a view of how Google will make Youtube disappear. Personally, I don´t agree that that will be the case. Indeed, if I had to guess I would not be surprised that Google Video will do to Youtube what Google WiFi did with FON, and that is to establish a healthy competition with an internal project and an external one which Google partly or wholly owns. And, surprisingly, the internal project may very well lose and yet not dissapear.
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