As I prepare to attend Les Blogs in Paris next Monday and launch FON in France, I read the wonderful news that France has acted and fined its three mobile operators the astonishing amount of 534 million euros.

The following are ideas that surfaced during a brainstorm with FON colleagues in France. Some already have been used in Spain and I will share them with those FON members who are interested in spreading the word.

FON sticker on your mailbox: the problem with mailboxes in apartment buildings is that they usually are packed with advertising (flyers, coupons etc…). With FON, it’s time to get even. It’s time we use our mailboxes to do our own publicity. Let’s put FON stickers on our mailboxes so that our neighbours know that they can change to FON if they’re unhappy with their ADSL provider or know that there is a Bill nearby who is ready to sell them WiFi access.

FON flags: why not make orange FON flag for Bills so they can put them at their windows and let roaming Aliens in the area know they can connect.

WiFiFONs in parks: how about a Bill who brings a couple of WiFiFONs to a park and lets Aliens in this park call back home at ridiculously low prices.


Personal FON homepage:
When a fonero connects using another fonero’s connection, it would be interesting to have a FON homepage pop-up upon connection. The idea is to let each fonero have a homepage that he or she can personnalise. For example, if a fonero wants to promote an NGO, the fonero would be able to place logos and write about this NGO. Or it could be a blog, or an artist…

Sharing more than your connection:
Another intesting idea is based on the fact that by definition, Linuses like to share. So why not share more than bandwidth? How about sharing your books, your DVDs, your playstation games, etc.? Sharing with FON would have a much broader sense whereby FON members would not only share digitally but also share physical objects they can either deliver at another FON member’s doorstep directly or through the post.

On December 5th, FON will be launched in France, during the “Les Blogs” conference hosted by Loïc Lemeur. I’m pleased to introduce to you Yann Mauchamp, who will be leading FON in France. Yann is currently the manager of OpenBC in France.

There’s a lot of interest in FON here in France. Mobile calling rates are even higher than in Spain. For example, a call using a pre-paid card costs 48c/min in Spain compared to 55c/min in France. Being a Linus and using your WiFiFON for free while at the same time enjoying free roaming all across France is very attractive for FON members in France. It looks like here, we’re also going to have more Linuses than Bills, but France is another country filled with Aliens, more than in Spain, and people who live in areas where there a lot of Aliens want to be Bills. Indeed, to have an antena directed towards the street or a hotel, to have 50% of your bandwidth reserved for you and to be able to charge each Alien who connects to your access point is very attractive for many here as well.

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