Martin Varsavsky has just blogged about what I think is an amazing feat: Google and Skype have both invested in a company he started three months ago that aims at enabling a global wifi network bottom up.

Disclosure: I’m on the US board of advisors. And I have to say, the past few months have been quite a ride. Martin has been out doing deals with the energy of eight Jolt-chugging entrepreneurs. It’s coming together beyond anyone’s expectations, though. I would never ever have thought Martin and his tiny team could have pulled this off.

It’s been brought together incredibly quickly so there are still some loose ends and rough edges. Nevertheless, here’s the idea.

Fon does not want to wait for top-down wifi solutions. Instead, it provides a couple of incentives for people to get a wifi router and begin sharing access.

If you’re a “Linus,” you let any other fonero use your hotspot for free. In addition to savoring the joy of altruism, you’re allowed to use any other fonero’ss hotspot for free, anywhere in the world.

If you’re a “Bill,” you get a cut (I think it’s 50%) of the money foneros pay to use your hotspot. You cannot roam the Fon network for free.

If you’re an “Alien,” you register with Fon (for free) and then can use Fon hotspots wherever you find them for a rate far lower than you’re paying T-Mobile or Starbucks, etc. Fees have not been finalized, but it’s going to be way under the $6/hour typical in the US.

The aim is to provide enough incentives, and make it easy enough technically, that thousands of people will start providing Fon hotspots. Bottom up we can have a global network, usable for free by those who choose to share access for free and for an affordable fee by others.

If you know anything about Martin, you know that, having made a bunch of money as an entrepreneur, his heart and hands are all about making the world better. That’s the motivation behind Fon. Fon is especially interested in helping to grow wifi in poorer parts of the world.

But Fon has dreams even beyond this. It can be a platform for innovative community development. There are some really really interesting ideas in the works. Say no more.

There are, however, a couple of hitches.

First, to become a Linus or Bill, you have to have a wifi router with Fon software. The Fon software isn’t yet ready for end-user installation. It’s based on open source code by Sebastian Gostchall (Brainslayer) at www.dd-wrt.org. You can play around with it if you’re techinical enough, but only if you’re prepared for the possibility that you’ll trash your router. The right way to become a Fonero at this point is to buy a wifi router with the Fon software already installed. The Fon site will be selling such routers well below cost to the first 3,000 users. In a few weeks or so, the Fon site will also be offering an open source version of the dd-wrt software that can be installed by non-techie users.

Second, if you have an open hotspot now, you won’t once you’ve flashed it with Fon software. Fon isn’t aimed at people who (like me) already maintain an open hotspot. It’s aimed at the 99.9% of the world who doesn’t know WEP from an analog hole in the ground. By the way, Fon will include open hotspots in the maps of Fon access it’s preparing.

Third, before you become a Fonero, you should read the terms and conditions of your contract with your ISP. Fon is talking with some of them to make sure they’ll allow subscribers to become Foneros. This can be a source of revenue for the ISPs (see Ejovi’s post) and we’re hopeful that some will be enlightened enough.

Fourth, have I mentioned that this thing is moving at lightning speed? The Web site is a draft. But if Fon gets to critical mass — which is smaller than one might think — it could be more significant than perhaps even Martin has dreamed.

And with Skype and Google behind Fon, the impossible is already happening.

[Tags: fon martin_varsavsky google skype wifi]

Additional blog posts on Fon:

Ethan Zuckerman
Wendy Seltzer
David Isenberg
Juantomas Garcia (in Spanish)
Rebecca MacKinnon
Dan Gillmor
Anmtoin O Lachtnain
Doc, Lord of Searls
Antoin O Lachtnain

Follow up to the disclosure statement above: The US advisory board for Fon has been working unusually closely with Martin and Fon’s tiny staff. Martin has been unusually transparent about the process. The advisors are working on this because we believe in the power of wifi and the importance of getting it to places that purely economically motivated players will put last. The advisors are being financially compensated, but we haven’t discussed the terms; that’s not our primary motivation. Since I sometimes write about Google and Skype, you should know that they’ve invested in a company that I apparently have some financial stake in.

Categories: Uncategorized dw