GigaOM

Want to buy a WiFi router and save some money? Fon, a Madrid-based WiFi services company started by Martin Varsavsky and funded by Sequoia, Skype and Google, is selling WiFi routers for 25 Euros, which works out to about $30.

For a while, they were selling them for $4 a pop. Still, $32 is a pretty good price for a 802.11 b/g devices. Average price of this router in the US is around $55. The catch is that if you buy one of these devices, you become part of the Fon Network.

A surcharge of €/$ 25 willll be applied to all routers that are not registered with FON within one month of their purchase). We will notify you 15 days in advance of the said surcharge.

Well, you could buy the router, register, and then reflash the device ;-)

Here is a synopsis of some important developments in the world of Broadband, Mobile and the Internet.

* The Feds have given the go ahead for Alcatel-Lucent merger. Lucatel, as Light Reading calls it, is getting mo money from Telefonica and will help build out Spanish incumbent’s next gen network.

* KDDI outpaces NTT DoCoMo and adds 148,000 new customers in May. Vodafone KK, soon to become Softbank Mobile got 1100.

* Thanks to broadband, the future is in South Korea.

* India’s Tata Indicom has signed up ZTE for its CDMA infrastructure gear requirements. Separately, total number of mobile subscribers in India is now 100 million.

GigaOM readers in a poll earlier this month have spoken - Vonage stock is a sucker’s bet and is headed down. The stock market seems to agree. The odds are against the company. Daniel Berninger, senior analyst with Tier 1 Research thinks otherwise, and believes that like MCI that put the squeeze on old AT&T, Vonage can put the squeeze on its bigger, more well funded rivals including the Bells and Cable Companies.

Berninger, who was involved with Vonage in the early days, but does not own any stock in the company told The New York Times, that the stock is going up, and Jeffrey Citron could be the new Bill McGowan, the maverick who started MCI and took on the old Ma Bell. He might be in a minority (only 15% of 663 who voted in our informal poll thought that the stock will go higher than the IPO offering price of $17 a share.) Andy Kessler wasn’t too impressed by Vonage’s business model. Neither was I. Still, Berninger paints a pretty compelling case. He has been around in the telecom industry to see the parallels. Read for yourself … after the turn.

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Updated: Online spreadsheets seem to be the new black. A couple of days after Google announced its Spreadsheet, hosted wiki company, Socialtext has entered into a partnership with wikiCalc, an online spread sheet developed by Dan Bricklin, president of Software Garden and the inventor of the pioneering PC spreadsheet VisiCalc. As part of this agreement, Socialtext purchased some rights to wikiCalc, and Bricklin has joined the board of Socialtext, which willcontinue the development of it, and lead the community effort. Ross Mayfield, Socialtext founder tells his story.

wikiCalc is a “social spreadsheet” that enables organizations, small and large, to collaborate and share data online. As part of the deal, Socialtext will exclusively distribute and redistribute wikiCalc to enterprise customers. The partners will co-develop the product’s future versions.

The beta version of this future version of the product will be released under a liberal Open Source license. In addition to this forthcoming product, Socialtext plans to release its core product as Socialtext Open Source Edition. This will allow users to download and install the same version used in Socialtext’s commercial offerings, contribute to the development of the software, or even build new services around the core technology.

Connecticut’s Department of Public Utility Control has given the thumbs up (by a vote of 3-2) to AT&T’s IP video saying that it is not subject to legacy cable franchising requirements in the state. The PUC agrees with Ma Bell’s contention that video over copper is just another form of data, and it is two-way video, and very different from traditional cable and thus does not fall under legacy franchise rules. This clearly is a big win for Ma Bell, and Connecticut has the right demographic profile to make T’s IPTV service work.

This bothers Connecticut Attorney General, Richard Blumenthal, who is quoted by Connecticut Post as saying, “Without government regulation and a universal service requirement, IPTV providers will cherry-pick the wealthiest and most accessible consumers, leaving the rest of Connecticut with no choice and higher costs.” The ruling can be appealed by him and others, and they have 45 days to do so.

The franchise reforms at a national level are also gaining momentum, thanks to some well placed greasers (oops I meant lobbyists.) UBS Research analysts say, keep an eye on the COPE (Communications Opportunity, Promotion and Enhancement) bill - this could change the game a little. It basically has an amendment built in for preserving network neutrality, and also lacks any special build out requirements for new video providers, aka the Bells.

Dave Burstein, who writes the very influential DSL Prime e-mail newsletter, and one of the earliest champions of DSL and Broadband has some interesting observations to make about the future of DSL.

His words, not mine: “ADSL is so last century. Today, it’s fiber home or fiber + VDSL at 50 meg or more. Japan is the first country to see a major drop in DSL as 5 million switch to fiber.” Now that is telling, because the man makes a living tracking this industry, so he knows the clock is ticking. He says that Comcast head honcho Brian Roberts is betting that the cable giant will go “50 meg down, 15 meg up pre-DOCSIS 3.0…in selected markets” by 2007. (Cablevision already is offering those kind of speeds.)

Meanwhile, Australia, Canada, and more than half of the U.S. are likely to spend the next decade with a second-rate Internet, 60% to 90% slower than leading countries.

A day after Google co-founder Sergey Brin said he was having second thoughts about the decisions and compromises the search giant made when it came to China, China is reportedly blocking the main Google.com domain, though Google.cn, the censored version of Google is not being affected. Retribution? What do you think?

Lipstick.com is really SubReddit. In other words while Conde Nast might own it, Reddit really is the engine behind it. Or as someone just said: it smells like an (OEM) deal. While the domain is owned by Condenast, the Address records for Lipstick and Reddit are pretty close: 72.5.28.217 and 72.5.28.218. So what do I really think about Lipstick.com? Find out here!