Both Fon and Qualcomm will work together to finish a new Fon router that combines social WiFi with social music. Qualcomm will also work with Fon to make it easier for WiFi router manufacturers to include Fon in their products.
“The amount of this round and the caliber of investors will propel us into our next stage of growth,” said Fon’s CEO, Martin Varsavsky. After consolidating its business in several European countries and having a presence in Japan and Brazil, the WiFi-sharing network wants to establish in the United States. Since 2006, Fon has raised $71.7m.
Varsavsky added: “We expect to reach 35 million WiFi hotspots by 2016. Our recent expansion in the U.S. and projects such as our work with the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership to provide downtown Brooklyn residents, businesses and public with free WiFi are all a part of the strategy to reach that goal.”
Fon members have their own private WiFi connection at home but, at the same time, share another part of the connection with other members. Thus, a Fon member can have safe access to WiFi outside their houses through a crowdsourced network created with other members’ connections.
In several countries, the firm works with partners that integrate Fon in their routers, such as Deutsche Telekom (Germany), Belgacom (Belgium), BT (UK), Hrvatski Telekom (Croatia), KPN (Netherlands), Oi (Brazil), MTC (Russia), Netia (Poland), SFR (France), SoftBank (Japan) and ZON (Portugal). Its network stands at over 12 million hotspots in hundreds of towns.
“Fon’s unique approach to crowd-sourcing WiFi is going to play an increasingly instrumental role in the future of mobile data,” said Miles Kirby, senior director for Qualcomm Ventures.