TechCrunch yesterday reported that the Spanish company FON has raised another €6 million Euro in investment, bringing their total investment to €34 million.
FON’s business idea is that you set up a WiFi router in your home or business and give away free access to your network to other FON users in exchange for access to all other FON networks everywhere around the world. Alternatively, you can charge people for access and get 50% of the fee.
FON already has a distribution deal with BT in the UK and this new funding will be spent on the June launch of FON in Russia in collaboration with the Russian telco Sistema.
FON will also be releasing a new 802.11n router with USB in June.
TechCrunch reports that FON’s founder, Martin Varsavsky, says:
As far as our strategy, more and more we are collaborating with large telcos, which pundits wrongly thought were going to be our enemies. And that is because we have proven that a Fonero is a more loyal bandwidth customer as he gets to roam for free.
This news comes just days after Eircom, via Red C Research, conducted market research specifically asking for opinion on whether a shared WiFi model, just like FON’s, would be of interest to their customers.
Perhaps Eircom are investigating the viability of copying the model within Ireland using just their own domestic WiFi customers and their public hotspots (which are free to existing broadband customers until September 2008), but if collaborating with FON can work for BT, maybe it makes sense for Eircom too.
