Fon, a Wi-Fi sharing network, recently announced that it has raised $14 million (10.3 million Euros) in a financing round led by Qualcomm Ventures (News - Alert), the venture capital arm of Qualcomm Incorporated. Index Ventures, Google, Coral, Atomico and Deutsche Telekom (DT) also participated in the round.
The officials from the company said that the funds will be used to further build its presence in U.S as well as explore business opportunities in other countries. The company currently has 12 million hotspots around the world. Fon has offices in Madrid, London, Tokyo and New York. Its partners include Belgacom (News - Alert) (Belgium), BT (UK), Deutsche Telekom (Germany), Hrvatski Telekom (Croatia), KPN (Netherlands), MTC (Russia), Netia (Poland), Oi (Brazil), SFR (France), Softbank (News - Alert) (Japan) and ZON (Portugal).
Recently, MWEB also announced an exclusive partnership with Fon. MWEB customers with a Fon - enabled router can immediately access the rapidly growing network of Wi-Fi hotspots, which currently includes MWEB Wi-Fi Zones and Always On hotspots. In the future, as more MWEB Fon customers sign up, so the MWEB Fon network grows and more than 30,000 hotspots across South Africa are envisaged by the end of 2014.
“The amount of this round and the caliber of investors will propel us into our next stage of growth,” said Martin Varsavsky, CEO, Fon. “We are excited about our new relationship with Qualcomm, which is an amazing company and a leader in mobile data communication. By integrating Fon into Qualcomm Atheros’ (News - Alert) chipsets, more devices and systems will be automatically equipped to be part of Fon’s global WiFi network.”
“Fon’s unique approach to crowd-sourcing WiFi (News - Alert) is going to play an increasingly instrumental role in the future of mobile data,” said Miles Kirby, senior director for Qualcomm Ventures. “Qualcomm is leading the 1000x mobile data challenge, and Fon fits perfectly into our vision to solving the increasing demand for data.”
Edited by Cassandra Tucker