Archive for the 'wifi' Category

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REQ: more “BEING SPACES” in Brussels

Published on March 15, 2006 in Belgium, Brussel and wifi. 6 Comments

Anyone who often works at home is probably familiar with this: sometimes you would like to work somewhere else to finish something undisturbed, to see some people while you work instead of just the PC and the refrigerator, to have a meeting in a pleasant location, to be in another environment. I often do some work at the Recyclart or the AB Café, and almost always I’m the only nomadic worker there. Both places are cosy and have free Wifi, but they’re not real offices: there is no printer, no meeting room, no water cooler. And since I don’t pay for the accommodation, I feel obliged to order stuff. When I’m hungry, that’s OK, when I’m not, drinking 3 coffees in a row transforms my ADD into ADHD .
I would be glad to pay something between €50 to 100 per month to have a place in Brussels where I can drop by anytime, get some work done (wifi, printer, fax, meeting room, beamer) and maybe have some stimulating conversation with other people present. So when I read about “BEING SPACES”, it really struck home:

(…) urban dwellers are trading their lonely, cramped living rooms for the real-life buzz of BEING SPACES: commercial living-room-like settings, where catering and entertainment aren’t just the main attraction, but are there to facilitate small office/living room activities like watching a movie, reading a book, meeting friends and colleagues, or doing your admin.
from trendwatching

Continue reading ‘REQ: more “BEING SPACES” in Brussels’

Ancienne Belgique rocks

Published on February 28, 2006 in wifi. Closed

I’m in the restaurant of the Ancienne Belgique and it’s only a few steps away from heaven:

  • I just had a wonderful dinner (fish – sea bass, I believe)
  • I was waited upon by the lovely Marie
  • The AB cafe & restaurant are smoke-free and that makes a big difference
  • there is an open Wifi-spot here (“Petra Netzwerk” – on Plazes)

All four things add up to a splendid evening!

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FON and the art of nuances

Published on February 7, 2006 in wifi. Closed


It started with a juicy announcement for FON, Martin Varsavsky new venture: “FON can now count Google, Skype, Sequoia Capital and Index Ventures as investors and backers” (for almost $22-million). Good news for any company. He continues the announcement as follows:

Also I am pleased to announced today that we have obtained the support of two significant ISPs for FON. In America Speakeasy has said that they welcome FON and in Europe, Glocalnet and FON have signed an agreement so Glocalnet sells its services FON ready and the Swedish foneros will soon be able move around Stockholm and other cities with their WiFi enabled gadgets.
from blog.fon.com @ Feb 5

So the terms are “support” and “welcome“. That does not sounds as a signed contract but more like a “OK, we won’t make life hard for one another”.
In an interview with Reuters, Martin changes the wording:

Toward that end, Fon has signed up GlocoNet, the second largest ISP in Sweden, and U.S.-based Speakeasy of Seattle.
Varsavsky said he also holds out hope of convincing potential adversaries among established ISPs such as Telefonica, Deutsche Telekom AG, AT&T Inc. and Time Warner Inc. of working with his “foneros.”
from today.reuters.com @ Feb 5

Now it’s “signed up”. That’s a different issue, it means that there should be a bunch of papers with signatures. Onfortunately, Speakeasy does not recall signing anything:

Speakeasy is the only national ISP I am aware of in the U.S. that encourages sharing their connections. (Update: Speakeasy says there�s no deal.)
from wifinetnews.com @ Feb 5

With a follow-up story the next day:

On the other hand, he mentions several times in his blog and in news stories the word agreement, support, bargain, revenue sharing. Speakeasy has no agreement of any kind with Fon, which would tend to contradict any sense that Fon was sharing revenue with them (unilaterally?) and thus argues that Varsavsky was trying to broaden his appeal by mentioning a U.S. ISP.
Question for Google, Skype, Sequoia, and Index: Did Varsavsky claim a Speakeasy contract? If so, did you do due diligence? If not, will he disclaim his statements?
from wifinetnews.com @ Feb 6

Which leads Om Malik to comment the following:

Seems to me that FoN made a bone-headed move on day one of their very public life.
gigaom.com

and Mark Evans to something along the same lines:

In fact, Speakeasy claims FON is replicating its strategy called NetShare in which individuals could generate revenue by sharing their wireless connections. Looks like a big P.R. fiasco for FON.
evans.blogware.com

So, in the first week of being a solidly funded company, supported by some really big names, FON can start to explain that they claimed something that was not really there. I can only hope that the SpeakEasy ‘deal’ did not play a role in the FON valuation process.

I think Martin needs a good PR/Communications manager sitting next to him in interviews, to avoid him of getting carried away.

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Municipal WiFi: requirements for success

Published on December 1, 2005 in wifi. Closed

Double Wifi: prototype
Municipal Wifi is gaining speed. Some of the efforts are institutional (Joy Ito joins the FON advisory board, networks are being installed in San Francisco and New Orleans) and some are grassroots (John is setting up a Wifi cloud in Rio …)

I’ve looked at the models and tools of providers like FON and WifiDog/OpenWRT (any Linux), and I’ve done some testing as a provider myself. We’re not there yet.

Wifi checklist

For grass-roots municipal WiFi to really take off, we need the following:

PROVIDER CLIENT
SECURITY
- separate VLANs for internal and external PCs,
- standard firewall profiles (e.g. allow web, mail; disallow audio streaming, BitTorrent)
- accountability: some kind of authentication 		- protection from other (rogue) clients
- preferably some kind of VPN (no sniffing)
- indication of connection security
BANDWIDTH
- guaranteed personal bandwidth
- traffic shaping for each connection (e.g. each PC 		- guaranteed minimum bandwidth
- clear info on what is allowed (BitTorrent or not)
CONVENIENCE
- cross-platform (e.g. not Linksys only)
- wizard install (Next-Next-Finish)
- outsourced authentication (like FON)
- uptime tracking and ‘customer’ feedback – to distinguish between live, working access points and dead ones (e.g. Plazes) 		- single sign-on (same password everywhere)
- easy connect, log-on and surf away
- easy detection of ‘friendly’ access points
- global coverage
- map overview of all available points (like WifiDog/Plazes)

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