' Comstar ' will give its subscribers a Wi-Fi

Foundation Coral Capital Management, controlled by the AFC 'System', has acquired a minority share of the international Wi-Fi- FON network. According to the newspaper Kommersant, the source of ROS in the ' system ' told me that the package is CCM ' amounted to no more than 15 %'.
All in all, in the third round of funding, FON has received $ 9.5 million, most of which are identified as the time CCM. The proceeds will be spent on the launch of the service Fonera 2. 0. As explained in his blog FON founder Martin Warshawski, the service, several areas of work - it will share files with other members of the network FON, automate routine operations with Web 2. 0 (for example, automatically upload new photos to Flickr or videos on YouTube), download torrents, even when the computer is turned off, and so on.
FON in Russia will be launched in June 2008. It is expected that subscribers ' Comstar ' will be free to use the FON network by the end of summer - early fall.
Recall honors FON, who in 2006 began to enmesh the world khalyavnykh network access points is that the provider gives customers special routers through which goes to the network and the subscriber himself, and those who will be in the range of the access point. With this approach not only increases safety, but do not have to share a channel - these visitors come separately from the host, by the provider.
To keep things simple and clear, FON users are divided into three categories: ' Bill ' ( divided into the Internet for money, but have to pay themselves, albeit with discounts if you use other network ), ' Linus ' ( distribute and have access free of charge ) and . to. not have their own access points).
The project was established in November 2005, received in 2006, investments worth 18 million euros in 2007 - $ 10 million. It is known that the investors of the company are the company Skype, Google, venture capital funds Index Ventures and Sequoia Capital, Excite Internet holdings and Digital Garage. Now FON network recorded more than 500,000 users worldwide. However, according to Mr. Warshawski, the project is unprofitable: the project is losing 800,000 dollars a month. Perhaps, FON will be able to reduce losses due to ' the eastward expansion '.
Russian experts have different opinions initiative ' Comstar '. Now in Russia, more than 1.2 million users of Wi-Fi ( including corporate ), and this figure doubles every year, according to Kommersant, Leonid Delitsyn, an expert fund ' Finam - Information Technologies '. ... The market is extremely attractive to investors, so it is logical that the ' Comstar ' attempts to gain a foothold on it by unusual proposals ' - he says.
Director of Marketing and Products ' Enforta ' (the operator of WiMAX) Oleg Taynov believes that the idea of FON is interesting, but hardly ' Comstar ' feel the results within two to three years. ' We should start to rebuild their Wi-Fi network. ' Comstar ' now virtually invisible on the Russian market, Wi-Fi - they have a maximum of several hundreds of thousands of access points against the points for Golden Telecom in Moscow ' - he says.
Source:. Vebplaneta.