the fon is on

Filed in archive Entrepreneurship on December 6, 2005

Martin Varsavsky has a new venture fon.

Rebecca McKinnon writes about it:

"In a nutshell FON creates a system, using P2P principles, by which members can share wifi with one another. The objective, Martin writes, is "turning millions of wifi installations into a unified wifi FON network with a standard interface to accept all kind of wifi enabled devices."

Martin just asked me to join the company's U.S. advisory board. We've got a dream team going, including my friends Ethan Zuckerman, Dan Gillmor, David Weinberger, Joi Ito and Ejovi Nuwere."

Fon shall ideally enable you to use enabled Wifis around the world for free on the basis of credits that you can earn (by enabling access to your Wifi spot) or by buying them. The idea is to enable a network of independent Wifi hotspots around the world with a grass root network of supporters.

Cool idea, enough money from Martin's prior work, great advisory board with wide acceptance in the community - it seems the company can do the trick if it it overcomes the risks (security and failure to reach a critical mass).

If it succeeds you'll have the next Skype here.