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An Entry from the Archives

I'm a little dubious about Fon being grassroots. Fon is a physical service, while Skype is logical. Fon requires lots of seeded nodes to establish critical mass--the money could go a long way towards that. Skype needs only 2 users who want to communicate for it to have utility.

For existing outfits running free hotspots, the utility of Fon has to either bring them more users or enable them to roam. But many free hotspots are run by people who don't care if they can use other hotspots elsewhere; there's no utility for them.

I used to be dubious about projects that required enormous numbers of people to download software. The logical limitation of that kind of spreading meme has disappeared with broadband's wide availability. But physical reality is still a problem.

Remember that some community wireless groups--some with authentication and gateway software that worked--have attempted to build networks in this manner without the kind of success that Fon requires (although all free).

Fon could work, but it has a lot of large obstacles to overcome that no other company has. It will be terrifically interesting to watch them spend $21 million.

Glenn, Fon is definitely NOT aimed at people running existing hotspots. We talked a lot about this among the advisors because many of us (including me) have open hotspots and if we install Fon, we're limiting access. Fon is aimed at the vast majority of people who would share access if they knew how and if they felt safe doing it. Fon gives them a little more incentive to do so.

Fon is grassroots in that wifi coverage comes from individuals deciding to provide it. I hope there will be some top-down installations of Fon as well. And Fon will be seeding routers in some of the places where they're needed. The aim isn't to conduct a social experiment in pure grassroots networking; it's to spread wifi in pragmatic ways.

So, yes, I agree there are huge obstacles. I'm encouraged not only that investors have invested but that two of the most interesting players have invested. Should be interesting :)

David,

I saw Ejovi at ETel and listened to his presentation. He does a good job marketing the FON idea, and I signed up to get a FON router when they become available (like you, I already run an open access point).

I wasn't sure if there was a business there, but it sounds like they got a big vote of confidence from people who know more than I. Do you see a business there?

Thanks,
Tim

It reminds me of Marshall Rose's TPC.INT.

Four words why I don't see this taking off: venti low-foam decaf cappucino. If you care about paying for wifi, you want services (a place to sit with a cup of coffee) for it. If you don't want to pay, then free networks sound good. I can't imagine either T-Mobile or AT&T getting behind this one, and I can't imagine why any of the cafes with free wifi here in Ann Arbor would want to turn it off for FON.

'Fees have not been finalized, but it's going to be way under the $6/hour typical in the US.'
Any global project that sets it's fees based on what's typical in the US - even if to undercut it - is NEVER going to fly in large parts of the world. If FON really aims to help spread Wi-Fi globally, their pricing structure is going to have to be far more sophisticated than this.

There's a holy grail here in combining this with mesh networking. Imagine a street with 5 Wifi hostpots 3 of which are connected to 3 broadband lines. Now link them all together with a mesh protocol and aggregate the broadband.

- Anyone in the street can get LAN-speed networking between them. The whole street can have a LAN Party.

- Users of the LAN can get burst speeds of 3 times the base broadband speed. Especially 3* the upload speed.

Nobody's quite worked out how to do this yet. Mesh protocols aren't mature and aggregating the bandwidth is tricky. It's clearly only going to work in dense housing, but there's plenty of that.

Mesh? Yeah baby! That should be the goal here, not just a limited open hotspot network, as it will bring multiplier effects.

Anyway - sounds like an exciting project if it can reach critical mass.

This is great. Been using SKype for some time, now it team'ed up with Google, even better =)

"Fon is definitely NOT aimed at people running existing hotspots."

Then there are real physical problems. The devices that Fon is focusing on initially don't have the range to offer service beyond a very small indoor distance. Even if the device is put in a window, the distance they operate at is quite small.

With 100,000s of Fon points of this kind worldwide, the actual service area beyond the home or business in which the Fonero is operating the network will be quite small. Because most of this will be paid access (because there will be a relatively small number of actual Linuses, even if most users opt to be Linuses, compared to real roaming users), even undercutting T-Mobile, etc., isn't a big advantage.

Undercutting is a funny problem. With large networks already in existence that all offer flat monthly unlimited rates from about $20 to $30 (per network or $22 per month for Boingo across most US networks except T-Mobile), even a low hourly fee adds up for people who use hotspots regularly.

I always talk about a purposely public persistent hot spot. These kinds of hot spots have an intent to be available 24 hours a day (typically) with an effort behind them to make it a reliable experience.

As time has shown, people running hot spots as individuals -- whether free, for fee, in a network, etc. -- really vary enormously in commitment, quality, etc. There's no way to provide a reliable, repeatable experience for Internet access with a network made up of individuals who might receive, at best, tiny amounts of money monthly or free access at certain other locations.

Well, I for one am hoping that Google is demonstrating and implementing a vision.. I hope so...

Sounds impressive that two of the biggest players have invested and put thier money on the line - although these guys do seem to have one heck of a track record. Would like to know just where FON is located and how one would send off a letter, emial, or phone call to the principals ....

I agree with Glenn's comments above about the issues with individuals running hotspots. Sharing one's internet for free is not a major incentive to guarantee quality of service. Even sharing for a fee at a home or office will not bring in revenues. www.yeahfi.com talks about a model that charges for actual usage (MBs consumed) and incentivises small IT companies to setup networks of hotspots. Perhaps a step in the right direction for community Wi-Fi?

Fon may turn out not to be viable. It certainly will not be the only way wifi networks are created. And it needs to achieve some type of critical mass in order to succeed. A key question, then, is can Fon get to critical mass, and how many places does it need to achieve that mass in? These are tough questions, and they're obviously ones that Fon is working through. I wouldn't write off Fon until it's tried to kick-start itself.

I believe all of the advisors understand that Fon is a long shot. But it's a shot. And if it succeeds, it could spread wifi to places that otherwise would be the last to get it. Yes, Glenn, coverage may be spotty and unreliable in some places or even all places. But it's also possible that some communities in some parts of the world will find Fon an easy, off-the-shelf way to wire themselves. We'll see.

(Peter, Martin Varsavsky's email address is on his site.

Very well organized site. I particularly liked the resources section.
Will use it to plan my next trip to NWT. See you soon.

I believe all of the advisors understand that Fon is a long shot. But it's a shot. And if it succeeds, it could spread wifi to places that otherwise would be the last to get it. Yes, Glenn, coverage may be spotty and unreliable in some places or even all places. But it's also possible that some communities in some parts of the world will find Fon an easy, off-the-shelf way to wire themselves. We'll see.