The Fon blog

Connecting our homes and businesses to the internet will revolutionize the way we engage with technology. As WiFi experts, at Fon we’re excited and ready for this disruption of the industry and will be playing a key role in the near future.  

Gigaom is currently hosting a series of conferences to talk about this new era. Last night Alex Puregger, Fon COO, was one of the main speakers at Gigaom’s Structure Connect conference in San Francisco, where he talked about the latest from Fon.

Starting today our partner in Belgium, Belgacom, has a new brand: Proximus. The company is undergoing a full rebranding, from their logo, their website and apps design to product names. The result is a unique brand for fixed, mobile and IT for all their customers. In the words of their CEO, the goal is to “put the customers at the center of everything”.

We’re now launching a new flavour of WiFi sharing. Called WiFi for Business, our new solution for retailers offers WiFi in a professional, simple, and affordable way. The service is a plug and play solution that is easy to use, customizable and of course, secure.  Business owners can get the service by purchasing the new Fonera for Business via our online shop.

Europe is getting more and more Fon WiFi! Now it’s Romania’s turn. Today we’re announcing a new partnership with Romtelecom, the leading telco in the country. Our plan? Not a surprise! To create the largest WiFi network in Romania.

Soon, Romanians and visitors will find lots of Fon Spots in cities such as Bucharest or Timisoara. Of course, Fon sharing members will be able to connect for free. In return, Romtelecom Internet customers with a compatible router, can also become Fon members and roam the world for free in our 13-million hotspot network.

Fon is not only the world's largest wifi network, it's an exceptional technology company building unique products and working on diverse technical and commercial challenges. Fon is always looking for top talent and at the moment we are prioritizing technical profiles to fill some crucial roles on the Engineering team. In high demand: DBA with MySQL experience who is interested in messing around with new database technologies (NoSQL, MongoDB, Redis) and Software Architects with experience in SOA. Interested?

Fon just doesn't stop these days! After our success with Gramofon on Kickstarter we're now even happier because, at the same time, our hotspot network continues to expand. From early 2015 Fon WiFi coverage is going to arrive in a new continent!

We are thrilled to announce Gramofon, a new product from our team here at Fon. We have been working on Gramofon for almost two years, and it is with great pleasure that we unveil the product on the popular crowdfunding site, Kickstarter. We are on Kickstarter because we want to get Gramofon into the hands of the type of people that made Fon happen in the first place—and we want to get it to them first. 

Fon is finally arriving to the Netherlands! The first step to cover the country with Fon Spots will start on April 2nd. That day a pilot of the service will begin in Amsterdam Ijburg where all the compatible KPN modems will be activated as KPN WiFi with Fon hotspots!

Around 900 customers are going to be part of this initial project. It will last 6-8 weeks during which we will keep track of the usage and the user experience. We want to be sure everything is all right!

Last year we grew 50%, our network stands at over 12 million hotspots and there are more than 1,000 cities around the world with almost ubiquitous Fon WiFi coverage. But that’s just the beginning! We’re happy to announce that our growth will now be unstoppable since we have just closed a $14 million round!