Anyone order 400,000 foneras?

Fon got an order for 400,000 Fonera WiFi routers in January


"While we still can’t disclose from who Fon got an order for 400K Foneras I can say that it is a mobile operator. Mobile operators are realizing that Fon is their amigo. That for them it’s great when customers who paid their monthly 3G fees offload their traffic on to a WiFi network. More to follow."

LINK

Fon launches the PeekFon

reserve yours now: http://www.fon.com/en/promos/peek

The PeekFon will be 99 euros to buy, a reasonable price especially considering that the price includes both the gadget and 6 months of all you can eat email service anywhere in Europe. No roaming charges. No contract.

After that we will charge euro 12.90 per month for the service but as opposed to other email machines out there, there is no cancellation penalty of any kind if the user does not want to continue with the service.

This is a complementary service to Fon WiFi but it is not a WiFi product. It is a GPRS product. The idea is that with Fon you share a little wifi at home and roam for free but the PeekFon addresses those moments in which you can’t find WiFi in spite of Fon´s over 800,000 hotspots now available in Europe. With the PeekFon you get the most important piece of messaging, your email, anytime.

Browsing, Twitter, and other functionalities will be added within months but for now buyers have to think of the PeekFon as an email machine with a full keyboard.

Why is Fon launching the PeekFon?

Because in Europe we pay huge roaming charges when we leave our own countries. As a German you can come to France and easily pay in a day what the Peek will cost in a month.

Because many people still prefer a phone that looks like a phone for phone calls and sms and an email machine for email and don’t mind carrying two devices that do their jobs well.

Because even if you never leave your country Blackberry services, iPhone and Android services in Europe cost around 50 euros a month and have minimum 2 year stays and include no talking minutes. So in Europe even if you stay at home you spend 1200 euros to get email and if you travel around Europe you spend double that on the average. This would compare with 312 euros with PeekFon vs 2400 euros if you roam and 1200 euros if you don’t. So there are enormous savings for getting email.

Having said all this Fon recognizes that “apples to apples” a Blackberry, an iPhone, an Android is a better product than a Peek and if you have the extra money to sign 1200 euros contracts and spend a few thousand more for roaming the Peek can’t compete with the complete iPhone, Blackberry, Android experience. But as a pure and simple email machine the Peek can and its price is just reasonable.

We also recommend Americans and Asians and other non Europeans coming to Europe to get a PeekFon as roaming charges by US operators are a killer over here so much so that the iPhone for example comes with a feature to disable roaming.

The PeekFon will be available at Fon.com December 15th. It will be available for shipping to all European countries for which shipping is now provided for the Fonera. If we see demand from USA and Asia we will also have it available at our US and Asian shops to be activated when landing anywhere in Europe.

GPRS service for the PeekFon will be provided by the new Pan European MVNO for gadgets Spotnik. Fon will be Spotnik’s first customer.

Thank you Wired for your “Good Enough” article. It helps me explain why in the era of “my smartphone is smarter than yours” we are launching the PeekFON – unarguably the simplest smartphone around and no rival in terms of apps to the iPhone, Android or Blackberry. The PeekFON is about simplicity. A PeekFon is “good enough”. The PeekFON does one thing very well, email with a full keyboard. And email is what most people need at work. So the PeekFON is a working tool. It is geared towards companies who want to give employees connectivity on the road. The way I see it, if an iPhone is Facebook, a PeekFON aims to be Twitter. Simple, to the point, with limitations, but “good enough”. 23 euros for the device, no roaming anywhere in the EU, no contracts, and a flat 12,90 per month with the first half year prepaid. So you pay 99 euros for the device and 6 months of prepaid service when you order. After that, you only pay for the months you use it. If you want to reserve one click here.

WiFi Gadgets: Cradlepoint CTR-350 Black Cellular Travel Router

EASY TO USE

The CTR350 Mobile Broadband Travel Router is a full-featured wireless 802.11b/g router developed to be a plug ‘n’ play solution. Simply connect an activated USB modem, plug in the CTR350 and turn the unit on. Within seconds you will have a secure WiFi network for up to 16 WiFi enabled devices.


PORTABLE AND POWERFUL

About the size of a deck of cards (the smallest router in its class), the CTR350 can go with you anywhere. Enjoy the convenience of taking WiFi with you - never search for a hotspot, pay high daily access fees, or risk a non-secure connection again.


SECURE AND RELIABLE

This high-performance router platform, powered by WiPipe™ technology, supports multiple and concurrent VPN pass-through sessions, plus encryption modes including 64/128-bit WEP, WPA and WPA2. Additionally, built-in auto-failover keeps everyone online switching from wired to wireless broadband access in the event of a wired ISP failure.



MSRP $99.99
This product requires a 3rd party data modem and active data plan for full functionality.

http://www.cradlepoint.com

Discounted Fonera 2.0n

I just got a discount promo code for a fonera 2.0n in my email. Fonero's check your email, I'm going to order one.

Borders Signs Agreement with Verizon to Offer Free Wi-Fi

should have seen this coming since Barnes and Noble starting offering it.

ANN ARBOR, Mich., Sept. 29 /PRNewswire/ -- Borders Group (NYSE: BGP) today announced that it has signed an agreement with Verizon to provide free Wi-Fi service in virtually all of its more than 500 Borders stores nationwide. Borders and Verizon are well underway in the process of equipping stores to offer free Wi-Fi, with service expected to be available by mid-October.

"Re-engaging with customers as a serious bookseller is one of our strategic priorities," said Borders Group Chief Executive Officer Ron Marshall. "By offering free Wi-Fi, we are extending the open atmosphere of exploration that is at the core of every great bookstore experience and furthering the sense of community we have always fostered at Borders."

Verizon's platform will allow Borders to create a splash page that customers first experience when they log on to the free Wi-Fi service, giving Borders the opportunity to feature compelling content such as news of hot titles, special discounts and the opportunity to join Borders Rewards(®), the retailer's free customer loyalty program that has 34 million members. Among other benefits, Borders Rewards members earn $5 in "Borders Bucks" for every $150 of annual qualifying purchases made both in store and at Borders.com.

This agreement builds on an existing relationship between Borders and Verizon that encompasses a number of advanced communications and IT services, including wide area networking and voice-over-IP services, Internet connectivity and e-commerce operations support.

Borders.com

WiFi Gadgets: Verizon Mifi

Cool gadget out there (a replacement for the Fonera 2.0 and a 3G card)

"The Mifi is a tiny, battery powered EVDO modem which sits in your pocket and turns the incoming 3G radio waves into a small Wi-Fi network, enabling you to hook up your laptop, iPod Touch or anything else with a Wi-Fi radio. This last is pretty exciting on its own as it effectively turns an iPod Touch into an iPhone without a phone.

The difference with the Mifi is that it is so tiny and, according to the New York Times’ David Pogue, ridiculously easy to use. It’ll run for 40 hours in standby, much like a cellphone, and when you hit the single switch on the side it springs (or rather, stirs) into life, firing up a little 30 foot bubble of Wi-Fi around you. Once on, the battery will give five hours of surfing but can be plugged into the power as it goes to re-juice the batteries.

Of course, its a cellular modem, so you have some rather low data caps. The $40-a-month plan limits you to just 250MB (yes, megabytes) and jumping to $60 gives the industry-standard 5GB. You can share the connection with up to five devices, so if you’re generous with the neighnors on the Muni, for example, you could burn through that pretty quick.

Gripes aside, this looks to be an amazing device, freeing you from a specific connection for all of your internet-abled gadgets and just covering your personal space with a personal connection. I wonder if this will end up in Europe anytime soon — we have, apparently, excellent 3G coverage."

Via Wired - "Verizon Mifi: Personal Wi-Fi Coming this Month"

A legal Battle for Fon

I know this is a couple months old, but it shows how a company like Fon cant survive out there without partnerships with other companies like BT, Zon, and more. The legal battle in Germany shows how dangerous sharing your internet connection with the world really is. Any one who logs onto your fon spot is free to do whatever they want to, and you have no way of knowing who is doing it.

To make a long story short this is what happened (From the Fon Boards)

"The defendant makes the claim for unfair competition by focusing on their business model to the free sharing of DSL Internet access service, which the applicant their customers against a fee calculated differently recognizable available. Instead of using their own technical and organizational services at wholesale by a third party in order to develop the market, they use one of the applicant under different conditions created infrastructure "parasitic" to deal with its own offer on the commercial market. "

"We lost a lawsuit against a small operator who does not want its customers (to be) Foneros, but we are negotiating with them to (make them) realize that, like many other operators have realized, that Fon is a good business for them."

"FON lost the first trial on 11.11.2008 -> they did not communicate
FON lost the Second trial on 05.06.2009 -> they did not communicate
"The decision is provisionally enforceable"

FON has to pay € 200,000 due to the Security issues this causes,
25.000,00 € due to not giving a list of Foneros which are customer at 1&1 when the ISP asked for it;
due to the Second lost trial it seems these amounts are now set at 110% ...

FON (defendant) is convicted for the 2nd time, for each breach it has to pay upto 250,000 € - or imprisonment for up to six months"

Read more at:
Fon Boards - "German court decision: FON as "parasitic" WLAN sharing?"
El Fon Blog - "Foneros Panic as Major Legal Loss for Fon Surfaces"

Fonera 2.0n available in USA on 9-23

Looks like the fonera 2.0n will be coming soon for us in the USA (even though we never saw the 2.0g, but thats ok, the 2.0n is practically a normal wireless router. This is the way it should have been from the beginning. Plan on emptying out your wallet for one of these. It will set you back $100. (Available for Preorder at fon.com)From Martins Blog:

"With the “share a little WiFi at home and roam the world for free” formula, FON got to be the largest WiFi network in the world – currently at over 650K FON Spots. Now, with the new Fonera 2.0n (802.11n) WiFi router that gives Foneros (FON members) an auto uploader/downloader built-in, FON should reach well over 1 million FON Spots.

The Fonera 2.0n is described in the video below. In addition to making you a free, lifetime member in the largest WiFi sharing community on the planet, this is what the Fonera 2.0n does when connected to your favorite hard drive:

- downloads torrents on its own so you can arrive home and watch your favorite content (do not download illegal content, there are plenty of legal torrents available, for example www.legaltorrents.com). You can tell the Fonera 2.0n what you want to download from work or school, from your computer or even from your iPhone or Android.

-downloads from Rapidshare.

-downloads from Megaupload.

-downloads from any site with a file to download, like the latest Ubuntu version.

-uploads videos to YouTube. Send them over WiFi to the Fonera and the Fonera sends those HD monsters to YouTube, freeing up your laptop for the next hours.

-uploads those high quality pictures that take forever to Flickr, or Picasa or even Facebook.

-offers large files for your friends to download.

-prints via WiFi. It sends music to your amplifier via WiFi. It connects to a webcam so you can know what is going on at home. It works with DynDNS.

-converts 3G to WiFi like the MiFi.

-twitters! The fonera is the first gadget to tweet itself. You open an account for your Fonera and the Fonera tells you what it is doing, like “Your video is in YouYube,” or “Somebody connected to your WiFi signal.”

And of course, the Fonera 2.0n is N (802.11n), which means faster WiFi at greater distances. Lastly, if you don’t like to share WiFi and just want to have the Fonera 2.0n all for yourself, or you don’t believe you will make money offering WiFi to others, you can disconnect the FON function altogether…and we will still like you . But before doing that, you should know that Foneros who share their FON Spot earn on average 6 Euros in revenue (over 8 US Dollars a year), which means your Fonera 2.0n just might end up paying for itself and then some."

Why Fon isn't safe

no encryption = not very safe. This is a funny comic that was posted on the Fon boards. Very true...

Free WiFi and not from Fon

Forget about Fon this weekend and head to Barnes and Noble to get free wifi. Cheaper and more more reliable service, sounds like a deal to me.

Fonera 2.0n Preview

WiFi Gadgets: D-Link Wireless Pocket Router/AP

D-Link, an industry leader in networking, introduces another performance breakthrough in wireless connectivity - the AirPlus G DWL-G730AP Wireless Pocket Router/AP™. The DWL-G730AP is a portable and convenient wireless solution for the traveling business person delivering 802.11g wireless connectivity with a maximum wireless signal rate of up to 54Mbps*. Use it in conference rooms, hotel rooms, or even at hotspots.

The Wireless Pocket Router/AP might be small in size, but is huge in functionality. The DWL-G730AP supports multiple operation modes including: Access Point (AP) mode to create a wireless connection; Router mode to share an Internet connection; and Wireless Client mode to connect an existing wireless network. Easily switch between these modes by using the 3-way configuration switch located at the bottom.

In AP mode, the DWL-G730AP can be used to create a wireless network in a room where a single Ethernet port is provided. Now multiple wireless clients can connect to the network at the same time to share resources and files.

In Router mode, the DWL-G730AP can be used to share a single broadband Internet connection, such as in a hotel room. The internal DHCP server automatically assigns IP addresses to ensure everyone in the room can connect to the Internet. In addition, the DWL-G730AP supports VPN Pass-through and firewall features including Network Address Translation (NAT) and MAC filtering to protect your wireless network from malicious attacks.

When set in Wireless Client mode, the DWL-G730AP allows connection to an existing wireless network, without having to install complicated drivers or additional software. For added mobility, the DWL-G730AP can be powered over USB if power outlets are not available.

The Pocket Router/AP supports WPA-PSK to secure your wireless data communications. In AP mode, the DWL-G730AP adds support for 802.1x user authentication with an external RADIUS server. For setup and configuration the DWL-G730AP can be accessed via D-Link's user-friendly Web-based utility.

Easy to pack and convenient for traveling, the DWL-G730AP comes with an attractive traveling case which also provides accessories including cables and a power adapter. Increase productivity and enjoy the benefits of wireless connectivity while on the road with D-Link's Pocket Router/AP.

* Maximum wireless signal rate derived from IEEE Standard 802.11g specifications. Actual data throughput will vary. Network conditions and environmental factors, including volume of network traffic, building materials and construction, and network overhead, lower actual data throughput rate. Environmental factors will adversely affect wireless signal range.

Featured in PCMag.com

DLink.com

Fonera 2.0n

How about this Fon manages to put out a release date of the Fonera 2.0n and yet the Fonera 2.0 isnt even available to all countries. Wheres the logic in that! (not to mention Martin was talking about this router like forever ago, I wish I could find that post...)

Martins Blog:

"Last night at the Village Pub in Silicon Valley (Woodside, CA), we launched the Fonera 2.0n WiFi router - available for sale in Europe (€79) on September 15th and in the US ($99) on October 15th. The Fonera 2.0n is similar to the Fonera 2.0g but has a much more powerful processor and is built around the 802.11n standard which means that it has greater range, bandwidth and speed than its predecessor. The launch was attended by 30 of the most important bloggers, Twitterers and news organizations in the world, including The New York Times and The Economist.

Thanks to Loic Le Meur and Geraldine who organised a great event.

Here is the full press release."

Help Wanted: FON Looking for a "Junior Technician"

I would seriously like to know what their intent is, but other than that I was looking for a good laugh. Hey Martin, pick me, I got great ideas...

FON is seeking a junior technician to reinforce is technical and logistic support team in Madrid.

Responsibilities:
- Technical and logistic support for French / English speaking countries.
- Translate and collaborate for the documentation of FON products and services.
- Help improving FON services, reporting problems faced by users, with the ability to prioritize and propose solutions.
- Follow IT news in French / English speaking countries.

Profile:
- Must: French or English as mother tongue. Knowledge of Spanish is an asset.
- Experience in technical support is an asset.
- Good knowledge internet, computers and network technologies (Wireless).
- Good writing skills
- Proven interest in IT and technology in general.
- Proactive approach, will to learn and to be part of the FON project.

If you are interested in this position, please send your cv to hr@fon.com

Martin V's Blog: "Junior technician at FON"

Fifty Tech Startups You Should Know

I guess this is an accomplishment for Fon, and my favorite, OpenDNS also made the list. (Featured on BusinessWeek)

Look out Fon here comes French ISP Free

More competition (and probably a future partnership) Via Martins Blog:

"This week, the French ISP Free launched a community WiFi service similar to ours at FON. Owners of a Freebox v5 who share with FreeWiFi will be able to surf off the WiFi router of other Free customers. As with FON, Free customers must share to get access to the FreeWiFi signal, which is a second SSID broadcasted by their Freebox."

"Still there is a big difference between the new community launched by French ISP Free and Fon and that is that it is a closed community available only to Free customers and only in France as Free only operates in France. Moreover since this community has no aliens neither Free nor its customers can make money offering their WiFi to non donors as is the case with Fon."

Fon partners with E-Plus

Another Fon partnership (on the side note these partnerships really seem to help the Fon community grow and that's what it is all about. I would really like to see something happen in the US, there is a ton of potential here that nobody has taken advantage of. It would very beneficial for Fon. Hope you read this Martin), article via Martin Varsavsky's Blog:

Germany is Europe’s largest economy and a key market for FON. People in Germany love FON and the Fonero community there is very active. However, FON’s WiFi footprint in Germany is smaller than in other European countries like the UK and France where our Telco partners have helped us grow. Fon´s partnership with E-Plus, is about to change that. Today FON is announcing a partnership with the E-Plus group in Germany. With more than 18 million subscribers and annual revenues of 3.2 billion Euros, the E-Plus group is Germany’s third largest mobile operator. E-Plus is part of KPN group and is considered an innovator in the German mobile Telco market. E-Plus will help the FON community grow in Germany with a planned series of joint activities starting this year. For example, E-Plus will install Foneras in more than 300 E-Plus stores in prime locations throughout Germany. Together, FON and E-plus will target cafes and other public places where we will install FON Spots as part of the “City FON” initiative - similar to the “Chueca WiFi” and “Shoreditch” density projects in Spain and England. E-Plus will promote FON to their 18 Million subscribers and will help us to encourage them to become Foneros. E-Plus customers who register for the collaboration will be eligible for discounts on Foneras and will get free trial access to the FON WiFi network and once they installed their Fon routers they will be able to roam the world for free connecting to other Foneros.

The FON E-Plus partnership is great for two reasons. E-Plus has great marketing power that will increase FON awareness and help the German FON community grow faster. E-Plus is the first pure mobile operator to partner with FON. Initially journalists and bloggers had argued that Fon would be stopped by fixed and mobile operators. Some of these experts confused Fon with a P2P telco network. But the difference here is that while P2P networks destroy value for the music labels, Fon increases value to telcos. How? Well as our partnership with BT, known as BTfon, and others have shown, Fon generates value both for consumers and telcos. For consumers the proposition is clear, you share some extra, limited, bandwidth at home in a secure way with a second SSID or WiFi signal, and in return you roam the world for free. For fixed telcos, Fon increases customer loyalty, reduces churn, reduces customer acquisition costs. Fon enabled fixed operators can also resist price decreases as their customers have WiFi at home and everywhere else. Now for mobile operators the one big benefit of Fon is reduced capex (investment in the network). 3G is a phenomenal service because of its coverage and frankly no matter how many hotspots we put, Fon will never compete with 3G in terms of coverage. So customers who want to have Internet in a car or to find it no matter where they are will always have to use 3G. But when there is WiFi, there are now tons of mobile phones that have a WiFi option, including the iPhone, Nokias, Samsungs, HTCs and others. And use of WiFi is advantageous to operators because: customers are happy with the speeds, they pay their monthly service anyway and they don´t use the much costlier 3G infrastructure. 3G is great for operators for voice and light data. But when people start downloading 300MB movies and TV series to watch in their mobile devices, operators either have to charge for that bandwidth making movies expensive, or prefer that people use WiFi. Moreover some of the most popular gadgets in the world, such as the Nintendo DS, the PSP and so on, only come with WiFi. In this way, E-Plus can now service its customers on all of their connected devices.

All in all, this proves a point I have been making for a long time. FON and Mobile Telcos make great partners. WiFi is a complement to 3G. Moreover we are very excited that this announcement coincides with the launch of the Fonera 2.0. The Fonera 2.0 has just been introduced in Germany (not yet in the UK) and it is a router that not only gives you free roaming but also manages your transfers to the Internet. Fonera 2.0 on its own sends your videos to Youtube, your pictures to Flickr, downloads your files from Rapidshare or Megaupload, or Bittorrent (disclosure this app is working poorly at the moment) and it is especially good for converting 3G signal from HSDPA modules to WiFi.

If you would like to interview me about this announcement please use the contact form of this blog and I will be happy to answer questions.

Give your Fonera some style with a custom skin

I started this project a little over a year ago and never had a chance to blog about it. So here it is: custom skins for your fonera.

It took me a while to get the dimensions right, but with a little trial and error, I have a final product.

Here's how to make one.
1. download the templates I made.
2. Figure out what design you want to make. I would recommend taking a picture that maybe you took with your camera, downloaded from the internet, or created on your computer.
3. Print out that design from step 2 and print out a blank template. [size should be 276 pixels wide and 432 pixels high (or 2.88 in wide and 4.5 in high]
4. Trace the template over design and cut out.
5. Use double sided tape to stick to your fonera. (You can use sticker paper also but I wouldn't do that just in case you ever want to remove your fonskin)
6. and its that simple...

I would recommend using a good quality paper to print your designs on for best results. Now you can decorate for fonera 1.0 how ever you want. Put pictures of your family, hobbies, or decorate for the holidays, the possibilities are endless.

Template Links:
Template 1
Template 2

Let there be Fonera 2.0

Its official. Fonera 2.0 is up for grabs in Europe. Bust out your 49 Euros (about 63 good ol' American dollars)

From the Fonosfera Blog:

"As you can see it’s a Dolphin (yeah, I know you guessed by the name, smartass!) and is here to help you and play with you. Flipper does already include all the features we want in the Fonera 2.0 (for now ). Here is the list of the new features compared to old good Platero:

• Facebook Uploader: wanna share the pics of the weekend with all your mates? Put them in a pendrive, “facebook” folder and plug it in the Fonera 2.0. Everybody will see you drunk! (No, no, calm down. All the pics and videos are always uploaded in PRIVATE mode )
• Flickr Uploader and Picasa Uploader were already added in the Release Candidates.
• Install new versions from the Applications menu! From now on, a single click will separate your Fonera 2.0 from the next firmware… no need to visit blog.fonosfera.org anymore But please, come back or we will be sad!
• Nintendo DS works.
• Freed space for more plugins! We now have 1,5MB instead of 1,19MB
• Samba and FONBackup have a separated firewall option.
• Fixed IE visualization of the Wizard (yes, IE users, now it works… dunno why we fixed it though, lol).
• Fixed Torrent crashing problem with files that have many seeds.
• Torrent downloader now lets you chose the port and will be automatically opened on the firewall.
• The partitions on multi-partition disks can be now labeled as well.
• Polish has been added (thanks Łukasz!).
• You can now assign static DHCP leases and domain names inside your local network.
• 3G connectivity reworked: a long list of providers is preloaded so you need not to configure any value.
• And many more things… if you’re interested, check previous posts. I’m not writing all we did again

Bugs: yeah… as always. We will fix them, please report them!

Once again, and after having released the HW to the public, thanks to all involved! Martin, Jordi, John, Pablo, Javi, Steven, Alex etc etc etc etc etc etc etc (yeah, lots of people )"

Wifi.com acquires Whisher

For all of you Whisher users and for those who have never heard of either. This is a great service that is FREE, doesn't require you to buy proprietary hardware, and offers a public encrypted hotspot.

"The news are out! We can finally disclose what we have been working on during the last few months - Wifi.com completed the acquistion of Whisher in mid-January.

Wifi.com is the logical progression for Whisher, as it combines the best domain possible for a WiFi-related service, our mature client and backend technology, and their experienced team which brings on board business development and marketing experience, as well as US-based operations which can help us grow considerably. We already have exciting deals in the pipeline which will soon be announced.

We would like to thank our fans, our users, our investors, and even our critics, for all their help, feedback, input and support during these three years. With your continued help we can now make wifi.com grow way further!

Below is a short FAQ on the deal.

Q. What does this mean for Whisher users?

A. Whisher users don’t need to worry about service continuity. Simply download the new Wifi.com plugin, available at http://www.wifi.com/download.html. Uninstall your current plugin (Mac users, remember to reboot after you remove the Preferences Pane), and install the new one, entering your current Whisher login & password. Wifi.com uses the Whisher technology for its backend, website and client plugins.

Q. What happened to our shared hotspots, and the maps?

A. The reason the maps have been offline for the last few weeks is that at one point we had to switch our database over to the wifi.com servers, and thus the maps started working at http://www.wifi.com/find.php. We also have a WiFi directory at http://www.wifi.com/location/. The hotspots you have shared are all safe, and available under your account at http://www.wifi.com/ - nothing has been lost.

Q. Will you be offering premium WiFi access?

A. Right now wifi.com will concentrate on the social aspects of sharing. Control who you share with, add as much free WiFi hostpots to the community, and promote interaction between users. Eventually, we will start offering access to commercial and premium hotspots through per-minute and subscription models.

Q. Why hasn’t there been much activity around Whisher during the past few weeks?

A. We have been asked this many times, and we even read comments on other blogs that we were about to shut down - nothing further from the truth! What we have been doing is working extremely hard with wifi.com in order to bring the new service online as quickly as possible. We are a small team, and thus we could not dedicate enough resources to developing Whisher at the same time.

Q. What happens with the Whisher team?

A. Mike Puchol joins wifi.com as CTO, while Ferran Moreno and David Douek both go onto other exciting enterprises, about which we will soon hear great things about. You can find out more about the new team at wifi.com com at http://www.wifi.com/aboutus.html"

via blog.whisher.com

What are the main benefits of wifi.com for users?

Wifi.com enables users to easily share their secure networks with their friends and colleagues. Wifi.com enables users to connect to commercial wifi networks (at hotels or airports) on a per minute basis, which can be significantly less expensive than per day or month service providers. Wifi.com will enable users to more securely browse the Internet when in public by encrypting users' wireless Internet connections.

visit WiFi.com for more info