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Community-Based WiFi
Networks |
Fon And Onet ("Onet Fon") To
Develop A Community Based Wifi Network In Poland
Other Topics:
Citywide Wireless Networks MANs,
WiMAX Base Station Optimiser,
Indoor WiMAX CPE
FON
August 30, 2006
London, UK and Warsaw, Poland -- FON, the largest WiFi community in the
World, and Onet, Poland's leading Internet portal, today announce that
they have signed a strategic partnership to jointly develop products and
services for the Polish market under the joint brand Onet FON.
In order to promote "Onet FON" WiFi Access Points, Onet will build
hotspots in Poland and promote Onet FON routers in its upcoming DSL
offering, so that Onet subscribers automatically become members of the
FON community and are able to surf for free on all FON Community Access
Points in the World. |
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Onet.pl, owned by Grupa
Onet.pl S.A. (GRO/WSE), is Poland's leading Internet portal with over
200 different services and over 4 million active e-mail accounts. On a
monthly basis, it records over 2 billion page views. Onet.pl develops
and launches new types of advertising targeted to the local market, as
well as online games, premium content and online sales for Internet
domains, premium SMS services for mobile phones and airplane tickets.
The company reported dynamic growth in the first six months of 2006 of
46 % increase in its total sales from corresponding period in 2005.
Onet.pl is part of Poland's leading media group, TVN Group (TVN S.A.,
TVN/WSE), which apart from Onet, is active in television broadcasting
and production.
Lukasz Wejchert, CEO, Onet, said: "Customers have the right to
communicate at fair prices whatever the means. Disruptive technologies
allow us to fulfill their needs. With OnetSkype we revolutionalized the
way Polish people communicate with each other across the Globe.
With Onet FON, I am convinced that we will revolutionalize the way
people use the Internet. Our Wifi network will provide ultimate mobility
to our user base - and that is Global.
We are partnering with FON in order to expand this service further
through the the "Onet FON" WiFi hotspots, bringing the free, Internet
based calling to those homes, schools, small businesses and hotels, who
have broadband access to wider offerings of the Internet at faster
transmission speeds. FON is a great company, and we are pleased to have
them as our partner."
Martin Varsavsky, CEO, FON said: "The Polish internet community is fast
becoming one of the largest in Europe. A lot of it thanks to the
creativity of the people at ONET who we are so happy to partner with. At
FON we have a simple proposition, you pay for your bandwidth at home,
install a FON enabled router and you travel the world connecting to the
internet for free. Nowadays more and more devices are coming with WiFi
including PSPs, Nintendo DS, laptops, digital cameras, music devices,
portable TVs, and the new Skype phones that make Skype go mobile. With
FON Polish foneros will be able to roam their country and the world with
their gadgets without having to pay the high charges that other
technologies such as 3G demand."
Many leading manufacturers, such are Nokia, Ericsson and Motorola have
already launched WiFi phones to the market, to be followed by Netgear,
Belkin, Edge-Core, SMC and FON's parent, SKYPE. These phones look and
feel like mobile phones, but they actually operate over a WiFi (internet
protocol) network using radio spectrum.
About Onet.pl
Grupa Onet (WSE: GRO) is the leading Polish new media group. Grupa Onet
conducts its new media activities through Onet.pl (www.onet.pl),
Poland's leading internet portal, and offers numerous other services of
media and communications nature. Onet.pl is the biggest and most popular
multimedia portal in Poland. Apart from revenues generated by various
marketing services (advertising, e-commerce, search engine marketing),
Onet.pl also profits from customer services (fees) such as, content
services, e-mail and hosting services, auctions, classifieds and dating
services, and telecommunication services. According to the latest
available data from Megapanel PBI/Gemius (as of June 2006), 77.0% of
Polish internet users make use of Onet.pl each month, and in June 2006
they accounted for 9.7 million real users. In 2005, according to
gemiusTraffic, Onet.pl on a monthly basis recorded an average of 2
billion page views.
About TVN Group
TVN S.A. (TVN/WSE) was incorporated in 1995 and became a listed company
in 2004. Since its foundation, TVN has launched a family of eight
television channels under the TVN umbrella, ranging from general
entertainment channels, through 24 hours news channel, automotive
channel to life style channel. By combining the number one commercial TV
broadcaster with the number one Internet portal in Poland, TVN Group can
directly access the highest growth segment of the advertising market and
have a unique opportunity to convert anonymous television audiences into
well-known subscribers and thematic communities. www.tvn.pl.
About FON
FON is the largest wi-fi community in the world. It was launched in
February 2006 by Martin Varsavsky, the Argentinian serial entrepreneur
with investment of $21.7million from Google, Skype, Index Ventures and
Sequoia Capital to promote FON's objective to create a worldwide
community of one million wi-fi hotspots by the end of 2007. FON allows
its members, called "Foneros" or "Foneras" to become part of the
community, setting up their own access point and sharing their broadband
Internet connection. This in turn allows them to share other wireless
access points on FON's global wireless Community.
FON enables ISPs to offer their customers worldwide mobility and also
allows developers to create new wireless applications based on FON's
open source (OS) platform. www.fon.com
For further details, please contact:
Grzegorz Zaliwski, Onet (IR)
email: grzegorz.zaliwski@portal.onet.pl
tel. +48 22 453 31 83
Martin Varsavsky, CEO, FON
Email: press@fon.com
Irene Nyberg, FON (press)
mob +44 7747 844 854
tel +33 4 94 76 46 68
email irene.nyberg@fon.com |
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