I had heard about FON a while back (when it became public), but I really learned about it directly from Martin when I was in Paris back in December (Les Blogs 2.0).
For a simple concept, it bowled me over.
While Internet over WiFi might be what folks think FON will be best at, when I look at the system I see a telco. Indeed, I told Martin that he was going to be the next big telco (Martin made his billions in telecom). And it’ll be a grass-roots telco with a kinda hippie organization meshed with real hard-core money-making billing. Wow.
Hmm, I wonder if Nokia (or another manufacturer) has been courting him (not that I would know if they were) to build some VoIP devices.
Then, last month, he struck a big deal with Google and Skype. Below is an excerpt from an interview by David Isenberg (telecom visionary) on David Wienberger’s site.
And here’s a link to some comments by Rudy on FON and Plazes (a WiFi, and some day cellular, mapping-directory-social network) coming together.
Hoo boy, it’s shaping up amazingly well. Good work guys!
Link: Joho the Blog: [berkman] Martin Varsavsky of Fon.
Martin, the founder and CEO of FON says Fon is "a software download that turns your router into a global family of routers." [Disclosure: I’m on Fon’s board of advisors. Also, as usual, all of this is me typing quickly and paraphrasing, and I’m certainly getting much of what Martin says wrong in content or tone.] He says Fon will soon be the largest wifi network in the world: There have been 20,000 registrations that need to be converted into hotspots. Fon hopes to build a "wifi nation." "We unlock the wifi nation that already exists."
On a parallel note, the inestimable Marko Ahtisaari has been become the leading Fonero of Finland. Just an example of the caliber of Foneros (you too, Yann!).
