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June 20, 2006
Wifi Telco Founder Looks To Raise VC For Expansion
Ben Van Dongen, a 42 year old Dutch entrepreneur, just might be running the leanest alternative telco in Europe.
He says his two year old company is already profitable, employs just 3 people, and has more than 3,500 broadband subscribers in Amsterdam. Its second city network is being built in Barcelona using the free cash flow from the Dutch business. 
The soon to be launched iZingo brand (the company is called Hotspot Holding based in Amsterdam) is positioned as a wireless broadband Internet access provider, targeting the consumer and small business market.
It is not a hotspot service provider business model, points out the founder, it's a telco business model with juiced up WiFi as the carrier.
Pictured here with members of his team: Gert Bos (l) and Carl Harper (r), Van Dongen (m) is poised to take a piece of the growing broadband Internet access market, enabling things like wireless VOIP, wherever he decides to deploy one of his WiFi networks.
Having proven that the business model works, Van Dongen is looking to grow internationally. He will be raising venture capital to do so.
Here are his thoughts on the competition that we jotted down in a recent interview.
What about Wimax - isn't this the market that Wimax operators want to target?
"Forget Wimax, it's not going to be a mass market application until 2012 -- reasons: there are three Wimax frequencies and no end user devices yet.) Compare that to Wifi, which has one standard worldwide and today 600 million enduser devices," said Van Dongen.
This sounds like a challenging of the way that FON and France's Ozone, are attacking the WiFi telco model?
"It's better than FON, because the subscriber does not need a fixed broadband connection to the Internet in addition to a WiFi card.
The entrepreneurs said: "You buy broadband Internet for less then DSL and you can use it anywhere you want (at home, in your ofice, at hotspots or outside)."
What about muni wifi?
"It is different than muni-wifi business - [iZingo] operates without any government or state subsidies. "
The a:c notes that a robust architecture has been enabled that can support a range of broadband and voice services built using wireless mesh technology from a hot Dutch startup called Hopling Technologies.
This is 42 year old Van Dongen's third WiFi startup. He also founded Picopoint Technologies in 2002, a supplier of software to manage subscribers, billing, and management of WiFi networks and roaming onto WiFi networks and Wjoy in 2004, a traditional hotspot operator, both still in business.
Posted on June 20, 2006 11:39 AM | Posted to Venture Capital | Wireless | Permalink
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