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Boing Boing: Spanish ISP wants its customers to share WiFi: “”

Now this is nice. Not thats its a new idea to have broadband customers sharing their DSL/WiFi, but having an ISP actually encouraging it.

Fon.es will launch their service in (as of now) 22 days.

Actually now that as I write this, I remember reading this on Antoin’s eire.com site, about Martin Varsavsky. Only thought of that now. Varsavsky was the person (or one of the people behind Viatel, Jazztel, Ya.com. Three *very* big Internet names in Spain.

Fon, unlike the Eircom’s of the WiFi world *actually want* their customers to share their Internet connection.

Customers are broken into two (distinct categories):

# Am I a Linus?
If you are willing to share then you are definitely a Linus. This means that others will use your WiFi Internet access but in exchange you get free roaming among the FON network.
# Am I a Bill?
If you want to milk your Internet access, then you are a Bill. FON will reimburse to you 50% of the revenues generated through your WiFi. Bills won’t have free roaming.

Eircom have in the past *expressely* forbid people to share their Internet connection with other people. Hmm, polar opposite to phone.

The “requirement” to join, is to have a Linksys WRT54G wireless access point. This is because to become a fon member, you must flash your WRT54G with their software (sounds like the Linux based OpenWRT OS for the WRT54Gs. Maybe its a variation on it…no-one knows yet!).

One thing that Antoin, and Martin Varsavsky both mentioned, is the power of Varsavsky’s blog, available in Spanish or English to get this product into the media, and the eyes of the tech user world (albeit it a possibly small market at first, but still he didn’t have to spend money on marketing!).

Varsavsky writes:

“It (Viatel) was a big idea but it took me maybe a year of hard labor to get to the level of global awareness that I have achieved in 6 days with FON through my blog. And it took 10 years and a great team effort for the company to be worth over $1bn.”

“…..it seems that 2000 people talking to their friends adds up to a LOT of people. Last night I searched “fon varsavsky” in Technorati and I couldn´t believe the amount of blogs that were writing about FON. And we are not even ready with our software!”

He mentions that speaking with a former head of Spanish Vodafone and he said that “…he just did not get it”. Now this always kinda confuses me….do these people not *get it*, or are they just pretending they don’t get it.

Surely they can’t have such closed minds. They are the heads of major telecommunications companies. An industry that is creating new and improved technologies in rapid succession of each other.
Sure you have to build on a standard, but you have to be able to adapt quickly or else you get left behind.

Do they see their companies as just business operations or as something more. Business almost *always* looses out when tech & business collide, *and* if the technology isn’t handled right.

You’re only as big as you are, until the next big thing comes along.

Anyway, Varsavsky seems to be following the road of Hugh McCleod, that you don’t really need a marketing department…the users/clients/people interested in your product will do the marketing for you…herm
I signed up to join. I do happen to own a WRT54G, so if I can get their software, I will most definately give it a try.

Let’s see. Buena suerte.

(Via .)