Alec Saunders SquawkBox

We live in interesting times.  FON has just raised $22 million from Index, Sequoia, Skype and Google.  FON is trying to create a ubiquitous global shared WiFi network, by encouraging broadband subscribers to share their connections with others.

They have two models:

• Be a "Linus" and share your connection freely with others.  Other Linus’ can also use your connection for free.
• Be a "Bill" and charge for your connection.  You must then pay to use others connections when you use them.  But, you pay substantially less than the $6/hour that the big hotspot providers charge today.

Many have pointed out that ISP agreements prohibit you (the user) from doing this.  Sharing broadband is already widespread, though, and the agreements are typically not enforced.  More importantly, though, FON wants to share the revenue they earn with the ISP.  They’ve already signed up Speakeasy and Glocalnet.  And, to my mind, there doesn’t seem to be any reason for the ISP not to like this.  If they can boost revenues from my broadband connection by 10% in a month by working with FON, this goes straight to the bottom line.

This is a pure long-tail play.  By empowering individuals to resell their bandwidth, FON is going to allow the users to make a few bucks each month.  But FON, by aggregating the dollars, will make a substantial amount of money.  If they are successful, they will be the "Google Adsense" of WiFi. There will be plenty of revenue to share with the network operator.

Neat.  Someone obviously thought long and hard about the business model.  I wish them luck!

It’s been a crazy last couple of days.  We arrive in Phoenix on Friday and got most of what we needed out of the way.  Spent a couple of hours at Fry’s across the street, and then went to Cingular to cut a deal for cell phones (we need a bunch in our demo).

Saturday AM I got up early, and hiked the National Trail in South Mountain Preserve.  The trail rises out of the parking lot at Pima Canyon at a pretty good rate, and then, after a mile or so, settles into a rocky ridge walk in the high desert.  I hiked from Pima Canyon to Telegraph Hill Pass, which is about a 12 mile distance. It was absolutely gorgeous.

Of course, by the time I got back I was dehydrated (despite having taken two litres of water with me), and very sore.  It’s been a long time since I did any hiking like that.

So, we did our rehearsal.  We set up all the gear in our suite, and went through it.  Frankly, it was a disaster.  After two days of not practicing at least 5 times per day, I was flubbing lines, and Howard was slow on the keys.  We practiced a bunch and got it into a little better shape.  A big problem, though, was that the cellular service in our part of the hotel is so intermittent.  Our demo has 18 cell phones in it!  We now own cell phones on every major wirless carrier in the states.

Today we did the technical rehearsal.  This is sitting with the team from DEMO, miking up the PC’s and other gear you need, and going through the transitions on screen.  It was a thousand times better than yesterday.  Moral of the story?  Practice practice practice.  We’ll be doing that tomorrow, and Tuesday.

And there’s a nice shot of Howard posing with our phones.