Lunch with Martin Varsavsky
Today we had lunch with FON-founder Martin Varsavsky and Christiane zu Salm. Not too long ago Martin spoke at DLD but since then his FON movement has grown from about 3,000 registered members to over 16,000 today. FON strives to become the world's larges Wi-Fi network by the end of 2006, easily surpassing aggregators like boingo.com. (T-Online currently operates ~ 4,000 hotspots.) I am interested to see when Germany will make this list of FON's top countries.
FON recently teamed up with Plazes which seems to be a natural fit. Maybe the deal will give FON's German market entry an additional boost. Also note that Mike Volpi, VP of business development at Cisco, joined FON as a board member.
Now Martin is on his way to Dresden where he together with Nicholas Negroponte will visit the local wireless community.
PS You can get your FON-ready router for just € 25 here.
FON is a great concept. But Germany will never make it into the top 5. And no, it's not about the 9live princess. It has something to do with building structures. The German post-war city is built of concrete and steel. Compare this to the clapboard an plaster structures of the US - and make an educated guess on the impact on WLAN throughput.
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