[February 22, 2012]

Fon Tops Five Million WiFi Hotspots Worldwide

Fon, the world's largest WiFi (News - Alert) network, today announced it has surpassed five million hotspots. Recent partnerships with Belgacom in Belgium and Oi in Brazil, as well as steady growth with existing partners led Fon to grow at record pace. In 2008, it took 17 days to create 1,000 new hotspots. Now, it takes only four hours. Fon added two million hotspots in 2011 and predicts over 50 percent growth in 2012.

Martin Varsavsky, Fon's Founder and CEO, said:

"In just six years, we were able to build a huge and global WiFi network that keeps on growing every day. In cities like Brussels, London, Lisbon and Tokyo the coverage is now almost everywhere. We have other partnerships in the pipeline, and no intention of slowing down."

With over fie million hotspots in more than 100 countries, Fon is far ahead of any other WiFi provider. People can join Fon by buying a Fonera device or by being a subscriber to one of Fon's fixed or mobile telco partners.

Partners use Fon to differentiate their services by allowing customers to share in Fon's global WiFi network, where users can share a small portion of their unused bandwidth in exchange for free WiFi at any Fon hotspot in the world.

To date, the company's partners include BT (UK), SoftBank (Japan), Zon (Portugal), Belgacom (Belgium), Oi (Brazil), MTS (Russia) and SFR (News - Alert) (France), with many other partners already in the pipeline.

About Fon:

Fon was founded in 2006 by CEO, entrepreneur and internet pioneer Martin Varsavsky with the goal of free, ubiquitous WiFi for everyone. Today, Fon is the largest WiFi community in the world, providing WiFi at over 5 million Fon hotspots. Fon partners with the world's leading fixed and mobile Telcos, hardware manufacturers and service providers, all who share the vision of a joint WiFi community. Fon's investors include Atomico (News - Alert), British Telecom, the Coral Group, Google, Index Ventures, Sequoia Capital and Skype. For more information: www.fon.com

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]