Sluit FON aan

On Friday, I pointed to word of potential ISP deals for FON in the Netherlands, and noted the country manager's interesting comments that incumbents were proving to be not nearly as obstructive or hostile as had been expected. Today we find, again via Trouw, that the first deal to be signed is with none other than Speedlinq, an ISP acquired by KPN at the end of March. Though Speedlinq only has around 40,000 customers, it looks to me as though KPN may be testing the water with this, and indeed the article claims that talks are ongoing between FON and xs4all, another KPN brand with 264k broadband customers at the end of Q2. In my now near-infamous opening presentation at the Telco 2.0 event, I put forward KPN as another candidate for inclusion on the list of companies which seem to be in the process of "getting it" (iBasis being a case in point) and this would seem to be further support for that argument.

(PS, the title is a bad attempt at wordplay based on KPN's slogan, "Sluit je aan")

UPDATE: KPN is apparently denying there is anything to the story, but my sources say otherwise...