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Editor

Fon eying Argentina deal

Fon is in negotiations to provide free broadband wireless across Buenos Aires. Alejandro Piscitelli, the head of Argentinian education portal Educ.ar, is quoting Fon founder Martin Varsavsky as suggesting that 50,000 to 100,000 Fon hot spots (or Foneros) across the city would achieve this goal. The article notes that this is not going to be an easy project on that scale. Note that Piscitelli is also involved with the MIT project for affordable developing world laptops for children.

As Glenn Fleishman notes, the big issue with the Buenos Aires plan is that, in the present incarnation, Fon relies on ISPs for back haul rather than build its own network. Now, one hundred thousand Foneros would require 100,000 broadband lines, and it is an open question who would pay for the back haul and would this compensate ISPs who lose customers as of the free-access network? If nothing else, though, the plan has certainly generated excitement in the Tango capital.

For more on Fon Buenos Aires plan:
- see Darío Drucaroff's Canal-ar report (in Spanish)
- read Glenn Fleishman's comments

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