The FON model works!!! Our strategy to make FON expand quickly throughout Europe and enable people who share their bandwidth to connect their wireless devices everywhere for free is picking up steam.

One aspect of this strategy is to blog the idea, so when the software is online next week in “Linus version”, Linuses can download the software and start sharing their bandwidth between eachother. We already have 1500 subscribed users for next week’s launch. The other aspect is to start making deals with ADSL operators. Like I said before, we’re close to an agreement with Jazztel.

In Sweden, I made two oral agreements that we hope to sign in less than a month with Glocalnet and Labs2. Telia is the Telefonica of Sweden and Glocalnet is Telia’s largest ADSL competitor while Labs2 is Telia’s largest competitor in fiber-optic access. These two companies together sell around 8500 bandwidth connections a month. The deal with them is incredibly simple: we give Glocalnet and Labs2 the exclusive right to sell ADSL and fiber optic access with FON Inside and they agree that all their WiFi sales have FON Inside.

The great thing about this is that nobody pays anyone. These companies like FON because they will tell their clients “With Telia, you pay 30 euros a month and have internet at home. With Glocalnet, you pay 30 euros a month and you have internet at home, and you can also have it at your neighbour’s house, in your city and in the whole of Europe.”

On Friday, I visited Labs2 and I « test-surfed » the internet at 1 Gig. Labs2 of Sweden offer internet connections of 1 Gig (uplink/downlink) for 89 EUR which is absolutely incredible. Surfing at those speeds is like landing a jet plane. Extasis. To have an idea of what it’s like to have a 1 Gig connection, here’s how long it took to perform the following downloads:

-new skype software: < 1 second
-high-resolution movie trailer by Apple (200 Mb): < 3 seconds.
-song on Napster < 1 second

I simply didn’t want to disconnect. In my house in Madrid, I have a 1 Mb connection (uplink) and much less on downlink. I asked for much faster connection and I was told to wait 5 weeks…

The system, that combines fiber-optic category 6 cables for a distance of up to 100 meters, is the best I have every seen.

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