FONtrepreneur: Program Failure
Written on December 21, 2007 – 12:17 pm
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten,
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In september Fon, the free Wi-Fi initiative backed by Google, Sequoia Capital, and Index Ventures, launched a B2B program in an effort to get more coverage in densely populated areas. It promised 50% of all revenues to FONtrepreneurs willing to buy a marketing starter kit to promote and sell FON. This kit included 3 La Foneras, a Fontenna and flyers which people could use to persuade local cafés and bars to offer free Wi-Fi.
Fon has always been promoted as a community effort with hundreds of thousands of happy and cooperative members. So this should have worked. But the program has been terminated before it was launched. Here is why:
Fon originally invited 860 people from 5 countries: USA, Canada, Belgium, Holland and Germany.
Of those, 39 people replied and showed interest.
Of those, 13 people agreed to go through the legal loop holes that the laywers required.
Of those, 5 used the promo code
Of those, 2 immediately put the La Foneras for sale on eBay
Oops!
It is hard to estimate how successful Fon REALLY is. They have previously claimed 200.000 hotspots worldwide and Fon’s founder has a full-time job talking about the imminent success of Fon at every major conference in the world. But how many of those hotspots are connected, active and available for other people is anyones guess. Judging from Martin Varsavsky’s ever present smile all is fine and dandy in FonLand.
Here is an interview with Joanna Rees, the US representative for Fon including a few critical questions at the end of the interview.
I have written a post about Fon and my doubts about their business-plan earlier. More about Fon at BusinessWeek and Techcrunch.
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7 Responses to “FONtrepreneur: Program Failure”
By David Petherick on Dec 21, 2007 | Reply
I’m writing from my lounge, courtesy of the FON router I got for €5 more than a year ago.
FON signed a big deal with BT plc in October this year to supply their routers. BT used to be the monopoly telephone service provider in the UK, and they have 3 million brpadband customers.
I blogged about this for a customer under the headline “BT & FON offer free wi-fi access across UK in world’s largest wi-fi network” - see http://www.ecademy.com/node.php?id=91633
It remains to be seen how this rolls out, but I think this might provide a model for how FON is successful in penetrating other markets.
By Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten on Dec 21, 2007 | Reply
Hi David, I own a Fon router too and I got it for free in the mail a few weeks ago.
But the question isn’t if you and I are happy with our routers but if there are neighbors or people wondering through my street who are happy with it and end up paying Fon. Giving away free routers to the world is easy (and that part is obviously successful) but getting people to actually use this service and eventually pay for it is a different story.
By gganesh on Dec 22, 2007 | Reply
true worldwide success of free distribution of router !!!!! investors should be happy at least thousand of people enjoy a bit of the round A and B invested the company ….
By FONfanatic on Jan 2, 2008 | Reply
FON is about to explode in new environments never explored by ICT-entrepeneurs. Watch it happening at http://www.camperforum.nl/view.....8bb225b0d3 and there is more at http://blog.fon.com/nl/, furthermore you’ll wait and see in 2008.
It’s nice though that after your failure with HubHop, see http://bomega.com/2007/09/25/f.....mment-9789 , you joined FON and kept your FONera running for at least a full year. But unlike your hotspot mine has been visited by lots of people, mostly temporarily staying students who want to mail their kin.
By Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten on Jan 2, 2008 | Reply
Hi FONtastic, thanks for your comment and those links. I do wonder about your definition of ‘failure’ though. We sold HubHop within a year to KPN when we had 50+ hotspots. They grew the business to 1000+ hotspots all in premium locations. I would consider that a success…
By FONfanatic on Jan 2, 2008 | Reply
I wouldn’t call it a success but the result of expoliting an already excisting network of telephone booths and retailer shops. And I suspect KPN of using methods known as vertical tying.