Legal Wi-Fi sharing to access the Internet is, by definition a low-profile affair. Except for FON, the Spanish company founded by Argentinean-born Martin Varsavsky. You know you’re no longer low-profile when your profile ends up in the New York Times.
The Times’ John Markoff profiles Varsavsky in the May 25 Technology section https://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/25/technology/25web.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&hp, apparently enduring the grueling trip to the Fonista’s 800-acre retreat on the Mediterranean island of Menorca, Spain to do so.
Launched in late 2005, and backed by some $50 million in funds from leading venture investors, FON https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FON enlists members (“Foneros”) who buy a FON Wi-Fi router (“La fonera”), which runs FON’s software to function as a public wireless Internet hotspot.
Varsavsky ambition is…breathtaking. In effect, he wants to transform the surreptitious, individual practice of stealing someone’s Wi-Fi signal and broadband connection into a legal, global wireless network, which could be either a compliment or an alternative to the carrier-based WiMAX and Long Term Evolution (LTE) 4G wireless nets starting to emerge.
This is not a job for someone with self doubts, and Varsavsky apparently has none. One of the most interesting parts of the story is Varsavsky’s account of his 90-minute meeting with Apple’s Steve Jobs, in the Fall of 2007.
It started with an argument and went downhill from there, at least according to Varsavksy (Jobs wouldn’t talk to Markhoff about it). Varsavsky worries now that Apple, which has a ton of apparently very good Wi-Fi routers up and running by Apple users, will end up siding with carriers, such as AT&T, with it’s exclusive U.S. contract to carry the iPhone.
FON’s goal is to have one million Foneros on each of three continents by 2010. Today there are 830,000 registered Foneros but only 340,000 FON hotspots. The Menorca conclave earlier this month was part of Varsavsky’s tireless push to sign-up technology and carrier partners (BT is already one http://www.networkworld.com/news/2007/100407-bt-fon-wi-fi.html) and to raise awareness of FON https://www.fon.com/en/.
Markoff quotes John Sawyer, CTO for Clearwire, which just signed that deal with Sprint to deploy a nationwide WiMAX network on FON’s idea and prospects: “We’re skeptical.”
Me, too. Most of the community-based, grass-roots, bottom-up wireless networking movements I’ve seen are inherently parasitical: to the degree that they work, they work because someone, somewhere, has invested a lot of money in infrastructure that these locally-based users never see but absolutely rely on.
But given that those investments for 4G are being made (as Clearwire/Sprint) show, possibly Varsavsky’s scheme may pay off: by focusing on making access to those nets simple and ubiquitous.
Instead of parasites, Foneros become symbiotes: living with a host organism to the mutual benefit of both.
