Sunday, February 5, 2006

A DREAM COME TRUE

As you know, FON is a global community of people who share WiFi connections. We call these people "Foneros", as a tribute to our heritage as a Spanish company. In order to become a Fonero, you go to FON, to download software that you install in your router, you place your antenna by a window and you share bandwidth with other Foneros from anywhere in the world. You can also buy the FON Ready router from our web site, plug and play. FON creates a free WiFi roaming environment for those who contribute WiFi signals, namely those who have already signed up with a local ISP and downloaded our software into their WiFi routers.

The success of FON, like the success of all online communities -- such as eBay, Skype, ICQ, IM -- depends on many people joining. At the very beginning, when there are no obvious advantages to joining FON, it is not so easy to get Foneros, even though the service is free. But as Foneros continue to join, and there are more and more Fonero hotspots, the dream of a unified global broadband wireless signal becomes a reality. The FON movement, as we call it, can achieve what 3G or EVDO has not -- a truly broadband wireless Internet everywhere. 3G/EVDO are great for coverage, but their throughput is pitiful compared to WiFi and they are way too expensive.

FON was launched just 90 days ago and we already have over 3,000 registered Foneros. While that number may seem small, 3,000 registered Foneros puts us at 10% of our 2006 objective in only 3 months: to become the largest hotspot network in the world by the end of the year. Currently, the largest global hotspot networks have around 30,000 hotspots. But after having built the second largest Spanish Internet company, Ya.com and the second largest publicly traded telecom company in Spain, Jazztel both with significant backers, I realized that at FON was going to need very special alliances to succeed on its objective of having 1 million hotspots around the world in 4 years. I knew that our method of downloading firmware was a much faster way of building a unified global WiFi signal than the traditional method used by local hotspots companies. Their way -- buying WiFi boxes and deploying them hotspot by hotspot -- is costly and inefficient. Ours is simple: download and install. Ours is a people's network. But for FON to succeed we need tremendous magnifying power for our message.

So I sought the ultimate alliances in the industry, and aimed high, very high. And today I have a great announcement to make: FON can now count Google , Skype, Sequoia Capital, and Index Ventures as investors and backers. They’ve joined us to help advance the FON movement, leading a group that has put 18 million Euros into FON and also committed to give us a strategic boost that should help us make this great idea into a great platform for everyone who wants a faster, cheaper and more secure wireless Internet. We’ll invest this money in R&D; so we can make it quicker and easier to become a FONERO and so that we can expand the number of things you can do with your FON service. Our goal, after all, isn’t just to share bandwidth. It’s to use the power of people to people networks to create a global wireless network. What makes each of these firms great backers for us is that deep in their DNA is the idea of brand-new business models, tons of innovation and a commitment to making the digital world easier and cheaper. We feel the same way. So while we’re excited about (and responsible for!) their investment, we’re even more pleased to have their support. Also I am pleased to announced today that we have obtained the support of two significant ISPs for FON. In America Speakeasy has said that they welcome FON and in Europe, Glocalnet and FON have signed an agreement so Glocalnet sells its services FON ready and the Swedish foneros will soon be able move around Stockholm and other cities with their WiFi enabled gadgets. FON shares revenues with ISPs making it attractive for them to join the FON movement.

In coming days I’ll use this blog to tell you how we ended up here, including all the adventures we’ve had in the past few months moving from Madrid to Stockholm to London to Silicon Valley. I’ve promised to blog FON since the beginning. I’ve had to be quiet during the past weeks as we finalized our arrangements, but now I can use this space to tell about how backers like Niklas and Janus from Skype, our friends at Google or Danny Rimer of Index and Mike Moritz of Sequoia were so helpful in shaping and supporting our idea. I had never been to Silicon Valley until FON came about. Showing up from Spain with a business plan in my pocket and getting the support of two of the largest internet companies in the world in less than one month made me realize how it is that American dominates the internet. It´s all about willing to take risks. In this case what was unique was how rivals got together to collaborate at FON. This is understandable as unifying all the disparate WiFi signal out there and offering the internet everywhere has benefits for all Internet sites and ISPs involved (in the case of ISPs because FON is only free only after you sign up with a broadband ISP so FON is an added advantage at no cost to the ISP).

Now we turn to the task of building the movement. As you’ll see if you go to download our software, one of our first priorities is going to be expanding the platforms we work with. Today, if you’ve got a Linksys router (version WRT54G 4 and below, and WRT54GL/GS) you’re just a few clicks away from becoming a functioning Fonero. This router is costing us around 50 dollars at Linksys but for a limited time we are selling it for 25 dollars FON ready as we want to have as many Foneros as possible. A warning here. Becoming a Fonero if you already have a Linksys router is not as simple as say, downloading Skype. If you are not sure of your technical skills it is better that you simply buy a FON ready router. A second warning relates to your ISP. While we do know that some ISPs like Speakeasy in America allow FON do check with your ISP before installing FON as they may not yet allow it. At FON however we believe that as we sign more revenue share agreements with ISPs they will end up allowing FON since FON is not a free WiFi platform but a free roaming platform among paying customers. In the meantime we’re already working on software for other routers and we’ll roll them out as quickly as we can. (You can click here to sign up for an email note from us when we’ve got software for your router model.) In the future people will become foneros by working off more router models. At FON we have one simple idea: if you have broadband at home, you should have it wherever else you go -- free. Like Skype, FON is one of those low cost high advantage proposition as the chance of other foneros coming by your place is low (and in any case our software limits their bandwidth consumption to 50% at most) but the benefit to you and your WiFi enabled gadgets of having free WiFi roaming will be big when many foneros sign up.

Now how do we plan to make money at FON? At FON we plan to make money with characters we call the Aliens. To us the world is divided into Linus, Bills and Aliens. A Linus shares his/her bandwidth for free with other Foneros, Bills share their bandwidth for a small fee, and Aliens don't share their bandwidth at all.

If you capture FON´s signal and you are not a fonero in 120 days you will have to pay to use the FON signal. Our rates for Aliens will be like those of public transportation, a price of a subway or bus ticket. So FON will provide either free WiFi or very low cost WiFi. Still if you are using FON everyday it´s better that you become Fonero by signing up for broadband with your local ISP cause those low cost rates add up to more than their monthly charges if you log in everyday. What do we do with the money from Aliens? We share it with the ISPs so they support FON. Also in case you are interested in FON only to make some money and not to get free WiFi roaming we also share it with you. At FON you can choose. If you become a fonero to obtain free WiFi everywhere you are a Linus fonero, if you become a fonero to make money out of your WiFi connection you are a Bill fonero. We at FON think the world is built by Bills and Linuses (Bill comes from Bill Gates and Linus from Linus Torvalds) and enjoyed by both builders (Foneros) and Aliens who just like to enjoy things without caring much about building them.

Here's what Skype thinks about this dream...

 

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Martin,

My respect. You have continued the saga of the "Party of share " since Mike Page (Larry`s Page brother with e-groups) and the "new" digital duos: Sergey Brin y Larri Page, Niklas Zennstrom y Janus Friis and now you ( and...?)

Regards From Venezuela,

Jose Ali Vivas

# 1 | Sent by: Jose Ali Vivas – Monday, February 6, 2006 (00:31)

It is just couple of months you released FON, and see backed by the elite's in todays net.

Great idea and nice work.

Congrats from Turkey

Tahir Zaimoglu

# 2 | Sent by: Tahir Zaimoglu – Monday, February 6, 2006 (00:36)

Howard Gossage once wrote a famous headline for a Qantas ad: be the first on your block to win a kangaroo. Why not create a button saying "Be the first fonero in your country, town, county etc. ? And then buttons like "Italy's first fonero", "fon1Milano" etc etc ?

# 3 | Sent by: Hans Suter – Monday, February 6, 2006 (09:22)

I tried to sign up, but your registration is broken. First very slow, then throws a MySQL error on the last step.

Warning: mysql_connect(): Can't connect to MySQL server on 'db.fon.com' (4) in /var/www/fon.com_subdomains/en/registration/script-registration.php on line 47

Warning: mysql_connect(): Can't connect to MySQL server on 'db.fon.com' (4) in /var/www/fon.com_subdomains/en/registration/script-registration.php on line 51
Could not connect to the database. Error: 2003

I heard Ejovi give his talk at Etel and was impressed, and would be interested in signing up and purchasing a FON router.

Thanks,
Tim

# 4 | Sent by: Tim – Monday, February 6, 2006 (10:17)

Truly a dream come true.

Congrats from Lebanon,

Toufic

# 5 | Sent by: Toufic Absi – Monday, February 6, 2006 (11:15)

About time someone came up with an idea like this. I wish you luck. You have my support.

# 6 | Sent by: Sam Kerbeck – Monday, February 6, 2006 (12:38)

Martin,

With all due respect, how do you think you'll get the telco's here in the USA that provide the lion's share of DSL (Speakeasy is NOT A TELCO), as well as the Cable Companies, both of which have clear language in their terms and conditions to participate with you?

These are not little mom and pop ISP's but giant corporations wth billions of dollars per year in annual revenue and near monopoly strenght in core metropolitan markets?

Now, I am not saying that i'm against you, and in fact, if it weren't explicitly prohibited in my terms of service I'd sign up, but I can't see the prospect of some tiny revenue share being worth it to these companies, many of which support hotspots themselves and which would stand to lose mobile revenue to Skype, to reverse their positions on their terms of service for FON.

If that is the case, and as a result some 80-90% of the US market is off-limits to you what will you do?

Just wondering, because as a blogger your answer is newsworthy and as a VC Analyst, I am scratching my head at Sequoia's bet...

Oliver Starr
mobilecrunch.com

# 7 | Sent by: Oliver Starr – Monday, February 6, 2006 (12:57)

Congratulations, Martin! I think that it is a great idea. By the way, it is interesting that I'm a 4th year on faculty called FON, the leading management & IT faculty in Serbia :-).

I have watched your webcast made on Digital Lifestyle Day (The Next Big Thing panel) and you had there some very interesting remarks especially that The End Of... and your pool and Google Earth :-).

Keep up the good work!

# 8 | Sent by: Dejan Bizinger – Monday, February 6, 2006 (13:01)

Is that eBay money? Probably not. Sounds like Niklas and Janus. its not the same!

# 9 | Sent by: Christian – Monday, February 6, 2006 (14:20)

First off, in your FAQ section, it's linux not linus. In addition, I'm more than willing to share my access point, but I'm worried about certain people sitting in front of our house with a laptop on in their car. Hackers could simply find a FON point and launch an attack, leaving the access point provider with nothing else but a subpeona and a frown. What kind of protection is put in place? and more importantly, what is going to stop people from sitting outside someone's house?

# 10 | Sent by: Jeff – Monday, February 6, 2006 (14:27)

cannot register... http://en.fon.com/registration/new_login.php is not found

# 11 | Sent by: Carfield Yim – Monday, February 6, 2006 (16:25)

It’s clear this is a great idea if works just as simple as it looks. But I am wondering how you can make this work for business infrastructures or even for secure home networks. Security is very important for most internet users. Can you provide the FON service in combination with an existing (secured) infrastructure? I think this is really hard to arrange with all the different setups/routers etc. And if so, are you going to start-up your own servicedesk to help all your customers with there network problems? I think this is a critical issue in the fon operation.

# 12 | Sent by: Bart Sanders – Monday, February 6, 2006 (17:28)

Nice to see you getting some more media exposure. Pity about the Napster simile, but thats a US point of view.

I've ordered my 25€ router :)

# 13 | Sent by: Pete – Monday, February 6, 2006 (18:07)

My opinion only: this is an idea that is too little too late. The truly free hotspot movement is taking off, which calls into question the foundation of FON’s business model; namely, fees paid by “alien” users. I think people are going to look for free alternatives.

And, the technical model is firmware updates to routers. Yeah. You substitute that firmware with something coming from a third-party vendor, and you waive any support rights with that hardware vendor. Also, can FON *really* keep up with all of the router vendors out there in the consumer market space?

Then there’s the ISP issue as already documented by FON itself, and aptly highlighted by a previous blogger.

Finally, the marketing spin on the rate of adoption: 3,000 users in the first 3 months of operation, touted as 10% of the 2006 subscriber goal. Let’s do the Math. The 2006 goal must be 30,000 users if 3,000 is 10% of that goal. FON acquired that number of users in 3 months (November and December 2005, and January 2006), with another 11 months of 2006 to go to hit their goal. So, total elapsed time will be 14 months to hit the goal. That means they’ve expended 21.4% of the time allotted and acquired just 10% of the projected users. To me, FON is running 11.4% behind plan.

# 14 | Sent by: Eric Kuhnen – Monday, February 6, 2006 (19:30)

Two comments here.

1) This will be a dream-come-true for hackers that want to sign up and roam around pulling information of people's unsecure networks...
Imagine opening up an unsecured tunnel into everyone home's network...

2) As for reselling (or sharing) your DSL, Cable or even T1 bandwidth at home -- forget it... This was attempted both in NY city and San Jose once before and the ISPs sent warnings to consumers, reminding them of their "consumer" agreements (terms and conditions)... In the warning, the ISPs told people that they would upgrade their service plans to "reseller" or "business" agreements, but that would almost double or triple their costs.

So, read you agreements carefully... They usually say that this type of offense can cause your bill to be retroactively increased...

Trust me, it's a GREAT idea, but ISPs oversell their bandwidth by 20-to-1 and having someone eat up even 25% of that on a regular basis could cause an ISP to upgrade his backbone... This would be VERY costly...

Best of luck...

# 15 | Sent by: Greg Alexander – Monday, February 6, 2006 (22:20)

I very much like it. One suggestion, though -- for reasons of privacy, you may want to mask the true street address of the router and instead use the nearest street intersection [the way Craigslist allows apartment listings]. I'd love to adopt, but don't want anyone knocking on my door.

# 16 | Sent by: Kart – Tuesday, February 7, 2006 (02:40)

Many of these comments add up to a request for more details. Here in the States the press is generally saying that it's a nice idea that can never happen. I'm willing to open my wifi, but what will Qwest (my DSL provider) feel about it? How will the Linksys modem work with my computer? You must give lots of details for people to sign up. And why the heck do you need phone numbers, even cell phone numbers?? I can tell you a fact: many people will stop right there in the signup process. What is your rationale for asking this private info? Good luck to you.

# 17 | Sent by: ax ho – Tuesday, February 7, 2006 (10:22)

Martin,

CONGRATULUTIONS! We share your vision, and are doing something similar, although targeted more at Africa (where we live).

Thank you for validating what we've been working on for the last two years!

When's your next visit to Cape Town?

Regards,

Henk Kleynhans
Skyrove (Pty) Ltd

# 18 | Sent by: Henk Kleynhans – Tuesday, February 7, 2006 (11:02)

Which linksys router is it? As $25usd can get my a wrt54g pretty easy and I then don't need to pay shipping and wait.

# 19 | Sent by: Corey Allen – Tuesday, February 7, 2006 (11:13)

Martin, why did you, with all respect, kind of drop out from the so promising announcement of a revolution and challenge the ISPs? How come you instead decided to team up with ISPs and become their virtual sales force and split revenue with them? You could have been competing for the same customers, or couldnt you? Where is the revolution now?

/Hugo

# 20 | Sent by: Hugo – Tuesday, February 7, 2006 (22:00)

Hi Corey, the latest version 5 WRT54G routers are incompatible with DD-WRT.

The best one to get would be the WRT54GL (the L stands for Linux).

# 21 | Sent by: Henk Kleynhans – Wednesday, February 8, 2006 (00:30)

How about adding a google map of all of the current hotspots. I don't think I would want to sign up unless I saw others signed up in my city. Just a thought.

Dave Martin

# 22 | Sent by: David Martin – Wednesday, February 8, 2006 (00:50)


Can there be roaming services with Finnish wlan network provider Sparknet? Over 1100 accesspoints in Finland ...

Read more: http://spark.utu.net/en/index.html

# 23 | Sent by: Heikki – Wednesday, February 8, 2006 (10:20)

One thing the is the ISP's. But that is a question of how many Foneros we are (look at Skype). I think the main issue is the technology. To configurate your router is not for everyone. If that can't be solved the idea is dead. If you have a working router and not an anthusihast you don't take a chance to mess aounud with those things if you are dependent upon your connection - which most people are..
Peter

# 24 | Sent by: Peter – Wednesday, February 8, 2006 (20:22)

Martin,

congratulations on this bolt move! As you have demonstrated at the DLD conference recently here in Munich, you are a great visionary! And getting top tier investors and supporters on board deserves a lot or respect.

I am curious to see how you are going to execute on this. First, there is already a large community of free Wi-Fi spots in public places, which users can use free of charge. Secondly, I wonder how you will convince the ISPs - especially the major ones such as T-Online etc. -to cooperate with you. Their user agreements usually do not allow their users to open up their internet connections to other parties.

Good luck on this and keep us posted please...

regards Jürgen
www.germanventureblog.de

# 25 | Sent by: Juergen Habichler – Thursday, February 9, 2006 (09:55)

I like several other posters have questions about security. I personaly have my wifi network locked as tight as I can get it. From what I have read, from an encription standpoint there is none. The router is wide open which would allow anyone to drive up and hack away till they were able to get in. Or even better drive up with a scanner and sniff the network till they could get a password for the network. I would like to see another blog entry addressing these issues. Until then I can't even think about opening up my access point.

Mike

# 26 | Sent by: Mike – Thursday, February 9, 2006 (20:40)

Hi
I'm from Bosnia and Herzegovina's wireless community.

/*He he maybe Interesting is that we had likewise idea of sharing bandwidth.:).*/

Unfortunately it's been few days that I'm trying to contact someone from FON but you are probably very busy with all other staffs. I even tried to post on forum but as I saw there is a lot of unanswered posts what is definitely not good for growing the community.

however..

Maybe you should work more to organize "local kind of sub(FON support Societies)" very quickly. Just to unburden all other you guys in the top of community.
And then you can expect significant growth of participants in FON community.
plus you will easily control growth of the community and all other needs and events in community.

And that is btw something that we in Bosnians wireless community wants to do.

We are mostly high school and students at "technical faculty in Sarajevo studding computer science or telecommunications and most of us finished or studding cisco ccna or another courses
and because we have already have made wide wireless network we are experienced
and above everything very interested to help of widening something like FON.

So if any information's about how to become local support for FON please write us (and others) about that for everyone's good.

Sincerly Vedran!

# 27 | Sent by: Vedran – Saturday, February 11, 2006 (02:17)

This is such a big idea. It is not only about using and sharing technology. It is also about giving people the feeling of being part of a community and of being a useful contribution. Many people doing a small thing making a hughe a difference. I will feature you an my blog right now.

# 28 | Sent by: Jo – Sunday, February 19, 2006 (20:56)

I`m waiting for the first Fon hotspots in Germany...

So far there is only terra incognita

# 29 | Sent by: Guenter – Monday, February 27, 2006 (09:38)

Congrats on growing so fast. This will be awesome when it gets going really big.

I can't wait for it to get to Las Vegas!

Ron

# 30 | Sent by: Ron – Friday, March 10, 2006 (00:48)


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