reigersmants

I've just read a new post written by Martin Varsavsky, which shows his optimism about the rapid growth of FON in the US market. Obviously, if you consider a success to find people interested in getting a WiFi router for free (including freight and taxes), he has been quite successful lately, since in a few hours he increased "his US customer base" with 6,000 new members who asked for his gift.

But now a new "movement" has been launched. It is called WHISHER, and it's being promoted by Mike Puchol with the funding of Swisscom and Benchmark Capital. It is quite similar to FON, but the best of WHISHER is that you can be a member, even if you do not have WiFi to share.

Bad times for Varsavsky, who is facing competition even before making any EUR/USD from FON. WHISHER, and TORRASKI are the new players in the WiFi market, and the three of them will have to share the cake.

ENDESA, (NYSE: ELE), (IBEX-35:ELE) the largest utility company in Spain, headed by its Chairman, Mr. Manuel Pizarro Moreno has finally won the battle to the Spanish Socialist Goverment headed by Mr. Jose L. Rodriguez Zapatero, the worst president that Spain has had in the last two centuries.

A few months back, GAS NATURAL made a hostil takeover bid to control ENDESA backed by the Spanish Industry Minister, Mr. Jose Montilla, an illiterate who dropped high school, "to pay back" an old debt to LA CAIXA (the Gas Natural reference bank -La Caixa- condomned 6 milion € to Partido Socialista de Cataluña before the bid). Endesa's CEO refused to discuss the offer, and started his own battle to defend his company against both, GAS NATURAL and the Spanish Government.

Today February 2, 2006, GAS NATURAL has finally given up, and has announced that it will not bid for ENDESA anymore.

Mr. Pizarro has won, as well as all the shareholders of his company who have seen how the value of their shares has increased in the Madrid Stock Exchange from EUR 19.00 to EUR 39.00 in just a few months.

Now, we will be waiting to the disclosure of the offer that EON, the Germany utility, has presented today in a sealed envelop. Will the Germans buy ENDESA or will it maintain its freedom?

Its shareholders have the last word!

I don't know if the E.ON's offer is fair, but as I mentioned in my previous post, Mr. Pizarro, and most of ENDESA's shareholders have won the battle to Mr. Zapatero and the Spanish Socialist Goverment.

Etiquetas: M&A

Etiquetas: NYSE, ENDESA, EON, ELE

I've started writing back in my blog on a daily basis, and since I've some free time, I've also started reading other blogs as well.

Today I've left a couple of posts at Martin Varsavsky's blog questioning FON and WHISHER's business models, and today I've heard about MERAKI, the new kid in town.

Well, it is not the new kid in town, since it isn't exactly new, but it comes to compite with the Spanish start-ups in the WiFi world. MERAKI promises us something similar to FON and WHISHER, and that is just to have a WiFi connection when we are out of home, if we share our own connection.

It seems that the idea started at MIT, as a doctoral reseach project of one of its Ph.D. candidates to provide wireless access to graduated students.

Meraki is based in Mountain View, California, and is backed in part by Google.

Etiquetas: WiFi

The author of this video is Prof. Michael Wesch who is a graduate from Kansas State University, and a member of its faculty since 2004 . Wesch has received numerous grants and fellowships for his research, including a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship, Jacob K. Javits Fellowship, Explorer's Club Grant, and a Fulbright-Hays International Dissertation Research Fellowship.

He is currently launching the Digital Ethnography working group at Kansas State University to examine the impacts of digital technology on human interaction. The first outcome of this work was a short video called "Web 2.0 ... The Machine is Us/ing Us." The video was released on YouTube on January 31st 2007 and quickly became the most popular video in the blogosphere.

Etiquetas: Welch, Digital, Ethnography, Web2.0, K-State

As most of you know, I'm Dutch, but I currently live among Seattle (USA), London (UK), and Geneva (Switzerland). However, I do business and invest in Spain, the country where I grew up, and for this reason, I read the Spanish press every day, and I do also read, from time to time, Spanish blogs and websites.

Today I have visited the blog of Jesus Encinar, the founder of Idealista, a successful real estate portal in Spain. Jesus, a graduate of Harvard Business School is gay, and he is proud of being different. A few months ago he made it public in the weekly magazine of El Mundo, one of the most influencial Spanish newspapers, and today he is giving a speech at the well-known Instituto de Empresa, one of the world leading business schools, headquartered in Madrid.

Reading his post, I've found out that Spain, one of the most liberal countries of the world these days, it's at the same time one of the most conservatives ones. The gay community has grown, and there are some gay neighborhoods in the main cities, like Chueca in Madrid, quite similar to Castro in San Francisco.

Although the mentality of Spanish people has changed a lot in the last few years, and today most of the Spaniards say in public that they are not homophobe, I can assert that most of them are.

Instituto de Empresa's dean, Mr. Santiago Iniguez, and the Director of the Centre for Diversity in Global Management at this academic institution, Ms. Celia de Anca, have welcomed the launching of IEOut, the group of gays and lesbians of their business school, and have recorded a video to introduce the meeting that Encinar will lead today at IE. However, both of them have presented excuses for not attending this event.

Obviously, this is part of the false morality of Spain, where people say in public something that they do not really feel. Today is not politically correct to recognize that you are against gays and lesbians, and as an institution Instituto de Empresa should proclaim values such as diversity and tolerance, but its members are not prepared to be a 100% tolerant, since I guess that they, as most Spaniards, are still quite homophobe (*).

Etiquetas: gays, spain, homophobia

Ya.com, the ISP founded by Martin Varsavsky in 1999 with €30m, and sold to T-Online in 2000 for €550m is on sale.

If you have any pocket money available this week you can make an offer to Deutsche Telekom on March 1, date in which the sale will be made public.

A few investment banks are already offering the company to Ono, Orange and to several venture capital firms, but it seems that the asking price is too high to close the deal.

Ya.com currently has around 400,000 customers in Spain, and owns an optical fiber network of 7,500km in the Iberian Peninsula.

Etiquetas: WiFI, Internet

Most people believe that it is almost impossible to become a millionaire being honest, and I do share this opinion, in most cases.

Today I was reading Martin Varsavsky's blog and I've found a post wrote by Videoblitz questioning several legal matters of the WiFi sharing promoted by FON. It was quite funny to read the reply left by Martin: "And of course they would contact Fon if they had a problem with Fon! Why should they go after each Austrian? You have an unusual view of the world. With your views Skype would have never developed".

As far as I know, the contracts signed with our phone companies do not prohibit us the use of VOIP, while on the other hand, the contracts signed with our ISPs clearly indicate that we are not allowed to share our Internet connections.

It is a fact that most of the foneros are breaking their contracts to enjoy WiFi access out of their homes, and they should know that their ISPs can take legal actions against them, not against FON, because all of them are forced to declare that their ISP authorize them to use their WiFi connection as a FON Access Point to join FON .

Etiquetas: Business, ethic, FON, WiFi, law