{"id":636,"date":"2006-09-27T09:41:09","date_gmt":"2006-09-27T07:41:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/192.168.1.2\/sp\/?p=636"},"modified":"2006-09-27T09:41:09","modified_gmt":"2006-09-27T07:41:09","slug":"hoy-salimos-en-mi-periadico-favorito-el-new-york-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spanish.martinvarsavsky.net\/?p=636","title":{"rendered":"Hoy Salimos en mi Peri\u00f3dico Favorito: el New York Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Aqu\u00ed est\u00e1 el art\u00edculo<\/a>.
\n
\nSeptember 27, 2006<\/p>\n

A Worldwide Network Built on People Power
\nBy TIM GNATEK<\/p>\n

ALTHOUGH he runs his own business, Olaf Kreitz is a socialist when it comes to Internet connections. In the window of Braintransfer, his Internet consulting company in Manhattan, Mr. Kreitz has mounted a special wireless router from Fon, a start-up company based in Spain that is trying to build a hot-spot network around the world. He hopes passers-by will make free use of his extra bandwidth. <\/p>\n

Mr. Kreitz gets something in return for his largess: as part of a Wi-Fi sharing community being developed by Fon, he can log on free to other members\u2019 wireless broadband connections in a growing network of citizen-powered hot spots. <\/p>\n

\u201cI love the idea, sharing your Wi-Fi and being able to surf the Internet wherever you find a hot spot,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

Six months after he joined the Fon community, Mr. Kreitz remains optimistic, despite having had some difficulties logging on to nearby Fon access points, and the fact that his own location had been mismarked on Fon\u2019s hot spot location map (recently updated to show active hot spots and to help users correct errors). He said he thought the company would struggle for some time to solve such network troubles. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s going to be difficult,\u201d said Mr. Kreitz, who writes a personal Web log, www.fontas tic.org, that tracks matters related to Fon and its members, called Foneros. <\/p>\n

His mix of optimism and caution will sound familiar to many Fon users, many of whom like being part of a citizen-powered network but have been frustrated by glitches, outdated hot-spot maps and incompatibility among portable wireless devices, to name just a few troubles.<\/p>\n

Fon drew some press attention in February when it announced that it would receive $21.7 million in venture financing from investors like Google, Sequoia Capital and Index Ventures to develop a global network of one million Wi-Fi hot spots. <\/p>\n

With thousands of people joining each month, Fon\u2019s populist underpinnings are emerging as both a big advantage and its greatest challenge. Though the anarchic nature of Fon\u2019s wireless network has benefits, like its speedy growth and use of existing broadband infrastructure, it has found it difficult to ensure that its members\u2019 unregulated wireless hot spots are not turned on or off, or disconnected entirely, on a whim. <\/p>\n

Though more than 85,000 people have registered on the company\u2019s Web site to join the network, and thousands have installed Fon-enabled wireless routers in cities like New York, Berlin, Madrid and Singapore, service remains spotty in many locations.<\/p>\n

After using the network for two months, Jan Engelke, a member from Berlin, never managed to log on to another member\u2019s connection. He is unsure of any outside activity on his own router, as Fon\u2019s router firmware prohibits users who share from monitoring incoming traffic. \u201cWhen you look at the Fon map of Berlin, there are access points everywhere,\u201d Mr. Engelke said. \u201cBut until this date, I have never been able to access a single Fon access point.\u201d<\/p>\n

So far, Fon has relied on a sense of community and purpose among its members, as well as incentives, like the offer of a $5 wireless router and modest revenue-sharing arrangements, to attract participants. But there have not been enough of them to achieve reliable coverage in urban centers, particularly in commercial zones where there is likely to be the greatest demand for \u201cdrop by\u201d Internet access. <\/p>\n

To help reach critical mass in Manhattan, the company began a targeted membership drive in the city in July. Fon has offered to give away 25,000 routers to city residents, giving preference to people with street-facing apartments. Over the summer, 125 free Fon routers were distributed to residents of the East Village, which now has nearly complete Fon wireless coverage.<\/p>\n

Overseeing the distribution of the Fon routers is Andrew Rasiej, the Johnny Appleseed of Fon\u2019s New York program. Mr. Rasiej, a proponent of city-run wireless programs, is a Manhattan entrepreneur who made widespread Internet connectivity the issue of his campaign last year for the office of public advocate, a bid that he lost.<\/p>\n

\u201cI estimated it would cost $80 million to build a Wi-Fi network in the city, and spent my campaign trying to convince people it was a drop in the bucket,\u201d he said. \u201cHad I known about Fon, it would have been a quarter of that.\u201d <\/p>\n

Mr. Rasiej says the Fon network could reduce New York\u2019s cost to deploy a public Wi-Fi system because it could eliminate overlap with existing services. \u201cA city could save money by leveraging the networks already distributed through the homes,\u201d Mr. Rasiej said. \u201cThen a city only has to worry about putting nodes where there is no broadband access.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Fon executives say they are not relying solely on public-minded citizens to build its North American network. Juergen Urbanski, Fon\u2019s general manager for North America, said the company hoped to attract businesses like restaurants and cafes as partners, to help propagate its network.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re saying, let\u2019s not spend billions in infrastructure; let\u2019s illustrate what\u2019s available today,\u201d he said. \u201cThe problem isn\u2019t coverage \u2014 it\u2019s access.\u201d <\/p>\n

Mr. Urbanski has also been wooing Internet service providers, selling them on the idea that the Fon network can help them attract residential broadband subscribers. \u201cFon can be an onramp in terms of new customer acquisition,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

That argument has met resistance from providers like Verizon, AT&T and Time Warner, who view Fon members as breaching their end-user agreements by sharing broadband service outside the home.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf they do share outside their building, that amounts to theft,\u201d said Maureen Huff, a spokeswoman for Time Warner\u2019s Road Runner service. \u201cThis is like running a cable line out your window.\u201d <\/p>\n

Even if the service-provider conflict can be resolved, there are questions about whether the Fon network can compete with other developing services. <\/p>\n

Sascha Meinrath, a community wireless advocate and co-founder of the Champaign-Urbana Community Wireless Network in Illinois, which builds and promotes low-cost networks, said Fon was likely to have problems attracting interest in \u2014 and maintaining \u2014 what he said was outdated technology. <\/p>\n

\u201cFon is providing the last-generation technology, and they\u2019re coming to the game very late,\u201d Mr. Meinrath said, pointing to coming localized services like ad hoc networks, which pass data from one device to another without needing a central router. A different system taking a global approach, called wide area networking, spans larger areas, and is expected to rival the range of a cellular network, alleviating the need for block-by-block networks of hot spots. <\/p>\n

Past wireless companies like Cometa and Joltage tried to cobble together fee-based Wi-Fi hot spot services, but had problems gaining interest from operators and closed.<\/p>\n

Less Networks, a network based in Austin, Tex., that currently concentrates hot spots in commercial zones like cafes and restaurants, has had more success. It now operates more than 100,000 hot spots in 50 cities and 6 countries.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe discourage residential hot spots and want them in public access,\u201d said Rich MacKinnon, the company\u2019s chief executive. \u201cIt\u2019s a stable list \u2014 there\u2019s a good chance the Wi-Fi is going to be there tomorrow.\u201d <\/p>\n

Though some issues may restrict Fon\u2019s growth in the United States, the company may face an easier time elsewhere. There are already members in 30 countries \u2014 in fact, only about 26 percent of Foneros are in the United States, compared with more than 67 percent in Europe. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe world is not flat when it comes time to doing business,\u201d said Danny Rimer, a general partner at Index Ventures, a global investment firm, and a member of the Fon board. \u201cFon is certainly having more success in locking up I.S.P.\u2019s in Europe.\u201d <\/p>\n

Mr. Rimer credits that success to European service providers\u2019 struggling rivalry with the mobile carrier market, which is stronger in Europe than in the United States. He also attributes Fon\u2019s success in Europe to something deeper: users who want to contribute their bandwidth.<\/p>\n

\u201cEurope has socialist roots,\u201d Mr. Rimer said, \u201cand this is a movement.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/div>
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