FON - WiFi Community Australia Bound?
March 6th, 2007
FON. If you haven’t heard of them yet then you soon will. They are backed by some of the most powerful organisations on the internet, Skype and Google as well as the venture capital companies behind these giants, Sequoia Capital and Index Ventures are all investor partners in FON. So why has FON done so well to capture the attention of these giants?
FON is the world’s largest WiFi community. Started in Spain by Martin Varsavsky, FON is built on the idea of creating a community of people who get more out of their internet connection through sharing. Every router purchased by a user enables that user to become a mini-ISP. The beauty is they can choose to charge for the service or give it away for free if they so wish. Any amount they charge is split down the middle with FON.
Clearly, this is the best home-based business idea in a long time. Have an internet connection and resell the bandwidth to people in your local area. Be your own ISP and profit. Or be chartiable and give it away.
We love the idea here at IMI Trust but we are not alone. There are over 300,000 ‘hotspots’, or router portals worldwide and FON want to grow that to 1m by 2010.
When FON finally hits Australia, it will cause a massive shake up in a stagnant and relatively service-free industry. Large Internet Service Providers are getting fat on the easy profits made by broadband users. Wireless service is poor in Australia and worse still, fees for usage are ridiculous compared our international counterparts.
So FON sound ambitious. You are not wrong. To kickstart their success in the US, they have have just offered 10,000 people who live near Starbucks, or any cafe with any existing WiFi hotspot, the opportunity to receive their FON WiFi router for free. A bold move considering Starbucks has its own service it provides, but when you have Google, Skype and Sequoia Capital backing you, bold moves come with the territory. Since there are over 13,000 Starbucks stores worldwide, this initiative is only the beginning of a large scale, long term plan.
Forbes Magazine have listed them as one of THE companies to watch this year. Not bad for a company which only had its first birthday this February.
The question on Australian lips is surely when is FON coming to Australia? We need your service sooner rather than later.
Also, on a more self-interested note, when is the IPO? And where can we sign up?
March 7th, 2007 at 9:19 am
I read that Forbes list and FON is one of the outstanding mentions.
Problem is now FON is under pressure to perform.
March 7th, 2007 at 6:47 pm
The pressure is on ISP around the world to respond accordingly we think
March 8th, 2007 at 10:28 am
I think it is good that they are under pressure. Linking up with Skype and Google and their respective VC partners was a good move.
Google generates the revenue from FON users searching and Skype with calls. They have the ability to generate more revenue from the set up than FON
March 12th, 2007 at 10:58 am
Telstra is already doing this with Mcdonalds at a overpriced service.
The problem is to find a balance between a high available networks and cost effective pricing.
After all you get what you pay for!
The are plenty of FREE wireless community services in most of the Capital Cities providing Internet accross these networks with a comercial partner should be a breeze.
March 19th, 2007 at 11:45 pm
The main issue we have seen with capital cities Myles is that the hotspots are small with very limited range. There would need to be thousands in Sydney for instance to truly make that city ‘WiFi enabled’
November 7th, 2007 at 10:56 pm
I couldn’t understand some parts of this article FON - WiFi Community Australia Bound?, but I guess I just need to check some more resources regarding this, because it sounds interesting.