FON Boards

The Foneros are not directly affected. So far...

But if FON goes belly up or is forced to shut down in Germany or even just do away with the Bill concept, the FON community will be affected.

It looks more about "do away the alien concept"... it's not about giving money to the hotspot owner...
it's about asking money for your internet connection... so even as a linus...aliens have to pay to access your fonspot;
only 100% goes to fon instead of 50% and even that is not accepted by this judge as FON/hotspot owner have no "business deal" yet with this isp...

but this blog message also talks that FON is talking with the ISP to get such a business deal...

You are right, I momentarily forgot that an alien can buy a ticket at a linus hotspot too.

But when there no more aliens, there is not much point in being a bill any more is there?


We will see. I say that if 1&1 was interested in negotiating, they would not have sued.

Luckily they gave bills roaming access like "linusses" when FON almost had that famous boingo deal.
Luckily FON is not giving away their routers away for free or heavily subsidised prices anymore so they can ... survive with no aliens(?) (certainly if you can keep them replacing their fons...)


1&1 is considered a "small" isp... FON is not interested in the little fish... looks like this one bite back hard

As far I could read from the judgement text at the court FON was adjudge to:
Omission (DE: Unterlassung) of the service toward the ISPs customers for which they have been sued.
Obligation to give information (DE: Auskunftspflicht) to the ISP if the ISP requests.
FON noncompliance (DE: Zuwiederhandlung) would mean paying an amount of up to 250.000 € penalty.

The Foneros are not affected?
What do you think -> could it affect Foneros because the ISP now has the right to ask and to get this information e.g. which of their users are providing FON?
What would the angry ISP do with this information?

Regards, Kyros

And if I follow fonboard.de's interpretation;
FON has been judged allready 2 times (october 2008 and June 2009)...
and they are now going for their 3rd try to get out of this?
if this fails they will have to go to Strassburg and demand that wifi is a necessity for mankind?

ISP's give away free wireless routers to new customers. As a result the market is flooded with cheap wifi routers. I wonder if FON can survive on selling hardware alone.

Lets not get carried away. FON is a small fish too. That may be the reason it took so long before someone dived into this hole in their bussines plan.

FON currently sells due to "1 time sale/installation" of a device which gives you a "lifetime" admittance to the FON wireless community ----> boingo/co asks $$$ every month...
* Contra : Boingo has better locations
* Pro : Boingo only popular for business due to $$$; FON doesn't target business people
FON doesn't have a wifi-n router...lot's of people are currently going for a wifi-n; they are cheap (but don't deliver the 300Mbit promised speed... but who carez... nobody can drive 240km/h with their car)


FON will only adress the big 3 isp's in each country...that isp is going to resell/distribute foneras or they have a lot of 1 type of linux wifi router that can be made fon compliant...
Eg it took quiet some time for Neufboxes... the BT Home hub was a bit easier...and currently they are working on the ZON cable modem which had to be rolled back (16.000 devices according to fon maps)...

I think the answer is obvious. If FON refuses to comply with the verdict, the ISP will go after the Foneros themselves....

They can easely see which customers have an active FON router by monitoring the heartbeats.

It's not a company on the cayman islands... if all juridic stuff has been tried out... they have to comply.
they are otherwise jeopardizing their E-Plus deal

FON claims the verdict is invalid. By that they are already refusing to comply.

Ssshhhhh! Don't give Fon any ideas!

This is actually one of the first things on their list of responses to losing Germany! They actually would love to get rid of the Bill/Alien nonsense, but it still serves them for the time being.

1) Selling routers makes them money.
2) Accepting Aliens "grows" their "network". (and brings in a tiny amount of money which they can overemphasize for PR)

They would have to give up "growth" in DE, but they could still sell their LF2 for it's useful celery-skinning and olive steaming abilities. No Fon hotspots there.

We lost a trial for unfair competition with an ISP that their legal team dosn't want that their customers share their internet connections, but besides appealing against this rule we're also negotiating with them to make them realize that Fon is good for their business, as it has happened with other ISPs and mobile phone companies such as BT in UK, ZON in portugal, Comstar in Russia, E-plus in Germany, Neuf in France, etc.
Those companies know that Fon is their partner and it helps them to get a better appreciation from their customers, offering them not only internet at home but at hundreds of thousands of other places.
Also, let me reassure that this ruling only affects FON as a company and not to the Foneros, be them Linus, Bills or Aliens.

David, please tell us what Fon's strategy for protecting the Foneros is, if Fon loses the right to operate throughout a whole country, or god forbid, goes out of business? Knowing that there is a concrete plan would be very assuring.

So David what is your comment on the discrepency between FON's claim that the verdict is invalid (Das Urteil ist nicht rechtskräftig.) and the clause in the verdict itself that it is provisionally executable (Das Urteil ist vorläufig vollstreckbar.)

Second German FON-Webblog communication in this case - FON tries to calm down everybody:
In German http://blog.fon.com/de/archive/business/klarstellung-fon-ist-nicht-illegal-in-deutschland.html and Google translated into English.

Regards, Kyros

when I reread it again (including comments on golem,heise, fonboard.de from germans)

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 (and halt FON operations (globally? german? 1&1 only? for that time)

the only thing FON has currently told us is that they have started a 3rd trial in the hope to find a better judge in their favour... and start talking with 1&1 so they would drop all charges and perhaps join FON

Or in German Das Urteil ist vorläufig vollstreckbar

Which I read as that the verdict is enforcible right away, but subject to review by a higher court. The verdict is not supended during the appeal.

Yes. Ands in addition they are ordered to stop reselling reselling bandwith to third parties (aliens) via 1&1 clients.

So how can FON say this will not affect the Fonoros?


My prediction is that 1&1 will not drop the charges and that FON will lose the appeal at the BGH.

Good summary!

And very remarkable for me:
Toward FON the court uses a rather a rough tone in the written text - there are many cardinal negative answers to FON topics and words like DE: "unlauteren Einflussnahme" -> EN: "dishonest interference", DE: "wenigstens leichte Fahrlässigkeit" -> EN: "at least slight negligence", DE: "schmarotzend" -> EN: "parasitic, leeching". I know these are all words a court can use here and there, but all together for me it makes an impression as the Higher Regional Court (DE:OLG) was possibly really annoyed about FON. So perhaps there is not only 1&1 who should be pacified by FON?

Regards, Kyros

In retrospect I think it is no coincidence that the latest firmware (RC4) for the Fonera 2 now has an option to disable FON sharing. Looks like FON is prepairing to comply with the verdict.