Insight

Interesting company “Fon” - bit of a revolutionary that keeps telco executives up at night, I think. Fon has a clearly stated ambition – it wants to build a global WiFi community.

This is how it works: you purchase a WiFi router from Fon (in Asia it is currently sold in Hong Kong, China, Taiwan, Korea and Japan) for a price equivalent to about S$25. You then register yourself with Fon and connect your router (Fon calls it La Fonera) to your home broadband.

You agree to share your broadband with other Fon members (Foneros) and in return you get free access to the internet through other “FON spots’ wherever in the world there is a another La Fonera. Access now is quire good in Europe and is growing rapidly in the US and North Asia. Interestingly, though, the Fonera is not sold in Singapore. However, I still managed to find several La Foneras in my fairly remote neighbourhood in the north of the island.

Fon is probably one of the more ambitious players in this area of “community networks”. More recent examples include a company, Meraki, which plans to cover the whole of San Francisco with the WiFi indoor and outdoor routers that it produces ( they are actually handing it out for free at the moment). The routers come with software that allows a user to charge for their services or offer it for free. Meraki relies on volunteers to run the network. All this while larger players are working with City officials to roll out a citywide WiFi network.

What would it take for us to do something similar, just a community friendly attitude and a willingness to fork out about 25 dollars. Will it take off here in Singapore? It says something about us if such community networks thrive in north Asia, Europe and US and we just wait for the official response.

The approach in Singapore for the nationwide wireless is the usual formulae: government led initiatives pushed and funded through private enterprises. Will this traditional approach endure, or will a community based system driven, owned and operated by the public and facilitated by private enterprise as the case with Fon and Meraki do better?

Given the need for a business case for the enterprise driven and owned approach, I think it is a challenge. The community approach however, with it’s sense of ownership and independence, I believe will create a much more vibrant enduring network.

And, if you think these are initiatives that are destined to remain fairly niche, well you may want to look at Fon’s two main backers - none other than Google and Skype.