Martin Varsavsky is a an Argentine/Spanish tech entrepreneur, teacher, philanthropist and founder of FON.
FON is the largest WiFi community in the world. FON brings you closer to free WiFi. Buy any FON WiFi router and become part of the Foneros (FON community) – now with over 1.5 million registered members and a growing list of Telco partners who add FON functionality to their ADSL modems. Google, eBay, British Telecom, Index Ventures and Sequoia Capital are investors in FON.

FON’s vision is WiFi everywhere,WiFi for everyone.Share some of their home Internet connection and in return gain access to free WiFi worldwide. With FON at home you get free access to over half a million WiFi hotspots worldwide. It’s as simple as that.

Martin shares vision on his blog. We think his thought about WiMAX was very interesting for WiMAX enthusiast.

FON´s first existence was about WiMAX not WiFi. But in 2004 it was too early for WiMAX and Martin moved on to the inmensely popular WiFi called Fonera and thanks to it and telco partners like BT,Neuf in France or Livedoor in Japan Martin built the largest WiFi network in the world.

British Telecom (BT) join together with FON to create BT FON which aims to give all its members access to wireless broadband wherever they are in the world.BT FON is the world’s l largest Wi-Fi community. There were over 100.000 hotspots in the UK and over 300.000 hotspots worldwide.

According to Martin,BT FON Community is the winner in the Most Innovative Wireless Broadband category at the Wireless Broadband Innovation Awards 2008.The WBI Awards is a global institution that recognizes leadership and the very best in innovation for Wireless Broadband.

In May 2008, Martin wrote an article about the WiMAX Fonera. In a couple of years FON would love to help its community members empowering them with not a WiFi but a WiMAX Fonera. The WiMAX fonera is just like a Fonera, meaning a wireless transmitter connected to DSL, fiber or cable, but it sends WiMAX. Martin admitted that he has such prototype and boast that he could make them for $200 or less.

For rural areas WiMAX is fine with huge towers a la GSM but for urban areas the FON’s army of Foneros is a much more efficient way of distributing signal. Of course Foneros would want free services for them as donors but Martin believe WiMAX provider will be happy to have some customers use their services for free and save billions in infrastructure deployment.

In December 2008,Martin shared story about WiFi on the Go with GigaOM and he testified,“It´s paradoxical that FON started as a WiMAX company, failed and was reborn as a WiFi company”. WiMAX is the perennial future that never happens. WiFi grows and grows”.

In July 2009, instead of launch the WiMAX Fonera,FON introduced the Fonera 2.0n in the US market for just $99.

Built around the faster 802.11n standard, Fonera 2.0n has a greater WiFi reach and faster throughput than 802.11g routers. A built-in USB hub and Fonera 2.0 management software allows users to connect external hard drives and other USB devices. This enables users to share data wirelessly, upload videos or photos automatically to YouTube, Flickr, Picasa and Facebook, or download* torrents or files directly from RapidShare and Megaupload without a computer running at the same time.

Fonera 2.0n also maintains all the features of previous FON WiFi routers. Once connected, it creates two WiFi signals, one private and one public, that allow for a secure, wireless internet connection at home and free access at FON Spots worldwide

There is a reason why Martin Varsavsky – the tech entrepreneur,teacher,philanthropist and founder of FON – stop his vision about the WiMAX Fonera that apparently to become a WiMAX router and  finally conclude that WiMAX is the perennial future that never happens.

Do you have any idea why Martin change his vision from WiMAX  ?

Via Martin Varsavsky’s Blog

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