What I did read was a comment you wrote in your blog where you said word-by-word: “la venta la veo para dentro de dos años, cuando tengamos unos 3 millones de foneros registrados…” which it means, literally, “I see the sale two years from now, when we have about 3 million registered foneros..”.

You said that right there -> http://tinyurl.com/69ewbo , so it’s not about you saying something and then a reporter taking it out of context to make headlines.

The fact that you deny having said “I see the sale in two years” (despite you DID say it) and then go on telling us “what is wrong with that?” makes it clear that yes, that’s what you’re after, so why blame it on a reporter now? That’s not nice.

Second, you don’t have to lecture us about “what would be wrong with that? ” when I myself said in my comment: “Something wrong with that? Nope.”

Companies are sold, merged, acquired… But I stand by my comments. You’re not building FON because you believe in it – you’re building something that can be sold, and in the process you’ll “sell” it as a revolution – it isn’t, it’s a business. And I for one don’t like to be bullshitted about revolutions that are just smoke, that’s all.

So as I said, thanks for having the cojones to speak up and say “yes, I’m working my ass because I want to sell this thing in two years for many many millions”. I actually appreciate that. Just don’t deny it, ok?

You forgot to mention that I have my own Fon-related blog. I would post here as myself, but somehow my name and the name of my blog, with various variations, are in this blog’s spam keyword list.

So Fon’s system is a poor choice (for Aliens) if there are few Fon hotspots to find, and a poor system (for Bills) if there are a lot of Fon hotspots around, since someone else is probably going to make the sale, and everyone else is going to be serving for free!!!

Fon needs to switch to a variable pay-per-minute system like most other hotspot systems and Fon’s partner, Skype. Pay-per-minute is a tried and true system which people are familiar with, and should not be portrayed as a flaw which Fon has overcome with their own system. Perhaps Skype can share their technology with Fon, if Fon cannot figure it out. Aliens don’t so much care if the fee at each hotspot will be the same amount, as long as they know that it is cheaper than alternatives, and the fee is posted on the login page.

Bills need to set their own choice of fees, despite anything Martin says, and Fon should only charge a simple flat fee for each sucessful connection, while providing billing and payout services for the Foneros, who are really franchisers.

These days, Martin always starts out by saying “first, you buy our router…”, and it didn’t start out that way.

When Fon launched, it was about downloading their firmware and joining a Movement, building a Community, and maybe making a little money while enjoying the perks of participating in something. Now all Fon does is hawk their proprietary merchandise and make deals with monopolistic ISPs which inevitably involve Foneros obediently giving additional wifi to others for free.

It is improbable that anyone will find another Fon hotspot to use while roaming, and Foneros are unlikely to make any money hosting them, but Fon has their merchandise profits, and takes their lion’s share of the connection fee, and so they won’t let anyone change their ways. Fon routinely makes choices which are not in the best interests of the Foneros who volunteer their locations, time and Internet service for Fon’s profit. The system is intolerably gamed to pay Fon, and only Fon. BT and Neuf partnerships won’t bring Foneros more money, it only brings us more freeloaders. We’re chumps!

Foneros won’t stay with fon for such pittances as $.48/per daily pass sale, or over fear of losing roaming access to 70,000 inacessable Fon hotspots (not 140,000 as Fon incredibly claims). These days, Fon spends as much energy in suppressing their critics as ordinary companies do in pleasing their customers.

Do these new investors realize what Fon will fritter this money away on, while it’s core product and it’s popularity stagnate? I wish *I* could get paid $100 million dollars to jet-set around the world (preferably scenic locations) and give short token presentations where I skillfully mis-describe my system for burning through seed money while I skim off the top.

Foneros have no use for Mexican waves, link sorteners, disoriented bullfighters or Cher impersonators, Babe! No Fonero has asked you for these things! You need to spend Fon funds to finally address the issues you’ve ignored for over two years, and not on non-wifi related projects that surely reflect your future business endeavors after selling Fon. Foneros don’t feel entitled to Fon’s money, but with fiascos like these, why does Fon seem to feel entitled to Fonero’s loyalty?

We really want and need to personalize our login pages! Not simply pop a very short comment in small type, down on the bottom right and perhaps register with a couple of Fon’s partners to replace (but never the choice to remove) the default video clip and photo gallery links. The existing bloated, mandatory login page is 500K, unattractive on a PC screen, and cumbersome to use on a PDA.

We really need to access our existing wired LANs, and we don’t want to pay an additional $55 for yet another La Fonera with a single LAN port, and throw out our existing routers. We really need to clone our WAN MAC addresses so our ISPs don’t reject the router. Foneros are so impatient with Fon that they wrote much better firmware *in their spare time*!

FON IS NOT SAFE. The public hotspot is unencrypted, and that is that! El sniffo y passwords en plaintext! Comprende? Don’t stuff yet another bittorrent application into the router firmware! Put a VPN server in it instead. VPNs can terminate from local network and Internet at the same time, and thus create an entirely new product for Fon to sell. Fon, which is not now safe, could truthfully become so, and even provide a sellable security product to people using wifi everywhere!

could you answer me to this as well?

a) legal aspect: Every fonero shares bandwith, 90% of them are not allowed to do so by their contract with their telco. Telcos do not care as long as you: pay nicely and dont jeopardize their income. Well, its a mobile world and telcos will go mobile. The moment Fon decreases their mobile (WiFi, HSDPA whatever) income substantially they will go after Fon.

b) Exit strategy: IPO? IMHO definitely not possible. Trade sale? Yes, to a Telco. Guess what all other telcos will do: Exactly. Cut the lines to private Fon providers, since they are left out. Financed by own cash revenues? Well, well, not at that development speed and the few $ revenues.

Good news

http://www.enriqueburgos.com

Fon team (en, ju etc) in US for the last 2 years has failed Martin.

Free wifi is given to Bills/Linuses who maintain Fon hotspots, when they are at other Fon hotspots. Fon does not actually let you give your wifi to the public for free, though there is a free 15-minute trial option, if the public watches an advertisement video from Fon. You can also assign a special, free username and password to people you trust, or just give them the encryption key to the private SSID. This does not include BTFON hotspots, which are native BT routers with a firmware plugin. BTFON hotspots are unequal to native Fon hotspots, and really should not be considered part of the Fon network.

Except for trial connections and “Friends and Family” logins, Fon *always* charges the public to connect to Fon hotspots. It is not a basis to provide free wifi to people visiting your home or business.

Fon resells your Internet connection to the public, whether you are a “Linus” who waives any profit, or a “Bill” who receives part of it. Fon does *not* give %50 of what they collect to the “Bill” hosting the hotspot. Fees and taxes are taken out first, and given to governments and/or partner ISPs. This amount varies and Fon does not disclose it. The remainder is “split” between Fon and the “Bill”. This is a very important distinction.

Fon does not let the host set his own fees, to be competative in his region. $3/day may be very cheap compared with 3G and other cellular data plans, but it cannot compete with free wifi that is available everywhere. Fon needs to provide an added value, like VPN service to secure the vulnerable public wifi connection.

Fon’s wifi system is an imitation of many “wifi-in-a-box” packages that have been available for years. Their only actual service is to maintain the login gateway, and collect and distribute fees. For this, they really are asking for too much to keep over half of the fees, and dictate all of the terms. Their only unique business creation is the database of public email addresses of visitors who are willing to pay for wifi at Fon’s price point.

Fon’s actual membership size and network size is a point of great contention, as Fon takes deliberate action to conceal the number of routers which are really still online. If you have operated a Fon hotspot, you must follow a formal process to have Fon take your icon off from their map. Otherwise, they still count you, in their media and investor statistics, as an existing resource.

It will be interesting to see how Fon plays in Russia. Fon needs to set up a Russian-language blog and discussion forum, and conduct in-person promotions there, in order to nurture a community. They still have not provided blogs and discussion forums for some of the languages which are native in their most popular European countries!

Something wrong with that? Nope. Just don’t assume he’s trying to build a sustainable business. Just a fruit ripe enough to get it sold. And if that takes a D, E and F round, so be it.

I mean, you’ve got to admire his honesty. How many enterpreneurs will tell you “my goal is to sell this in two years?”. Not many…

Charbax: Did you forget that BTFON users have to actually -opt in-, it’s not like they magically converted all the users into sharing users. Martin’s official figures are 70k BTFON spots.

On the money earning side…FON is allowing more and more services to be accessible without having to login and/or pay, for example, Google, GMail, and others. This means zero revenue for the sharing user should someone check his email all day using his broadband connection.

I agree with Gustaf that the penetration of any such initiative must reach a high critical mass, and achieving this through highly subsidized hardware which the end users control is not particularly easy. Until for some reason (I guess it involved some ‘influence’ from Martin V.) Francofon shut down its statistics page, it was showing just over 70k Foneras online *total*. This means millions of dollars wasted in boxes that are unlikely to be switched on again.

This article has a few errors in it:

- There are closer to 1 million active Fon hotspots today, not 150 thousand especially thanks to British Telecom and Neuf partnerships which add FON to British Telecom’s and Neuf’s already deployed routers and WiFi enabled ADSL2+ modems through automatic remotely installed firmware updates).

- Every Fonero earns money today, FON changed their system about 6 months ago, so you don’t jhave to choose if you want to provide your hotspot for free to get access to all other FON hotspots or if you want to only earn money. Now every user is able to earn money and access 1 million FON hotspots for free at the same time.