Ejovi Nuwere

I wouldn’t have believed it could be done if I didn’t watch it happen first hand for myself. FON is working with Google and Skype/Ebay. Martin Varsavsky has announced on his blog that we have just closed an investment with Index Ventures (early Skype investors), Sequoia (early Google Investors), Google, Skype and Ebay raising a total of $21.7M.

So what do these powerful connections and extra funding mean for FON? It means we now have more gas to fuel the movement. But even with all of these great companies helping to bring the FON concept of universal WiFi sharing to reality we still very much need you. When I spoke about FON at the ETel conference I told the audience that they were the most critical ingredient for FON’s success and that is still true.

The largest hotspot network in the world has 20K hotspots. We have had more then 3,000 people register since we launched 3 months ago. We could have grown to be the largest hotspot network in the world with only your support. But we want to be more then the largest hotspot network. We want ubiquitous WiFi. WiFi on every corner. We want 1 million hotspots throughout America. With these new partnerships FON can grow to 1 million hotspots faster. We can grow to bring WiFi to communities that need it most! Can you imagine the possibilities for WiFi in Harlem now? Or for disadvantaged communities throughout America? Now my belief that we can use technology to bring access to EVERYONE in America is so close that I can taste it. It’s disorientating even and I’m not sure how coherent this post is. But I’m really happy now. Its one thing to see the possibilities when you first start out on a journey but its another to see ideas turn into reality and this is what we are watching now.

What I love about FON is that behind every hotspot is a human. Behind every hotspot is a story. Now FON has made it easier for you to join. To be a member of the community and to share your story among us, we are subsidizing the first few hundred routers. You can buy a FON enabled router for $25 dollars!. Please join me in this movement.

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 5th, 2006 at 3:56 pm and is filed under . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.