

Forgotten by the Future, Some Take the Internet Into Their Own Hands - seanmb
http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/rural-broadband-community-supported-internet

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noonespecial
All we had to do was begin building a WISP, sign 3 customers and put out some
flyers and Comcast (who'd previously, perpetually said they'd service the area
in 4 years time) rushed in and within about 6 weeks had service to everyone.

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calgoo
This is nothing new....

Here in barcelona, spain, there is a project called guifi.net which started
out as a open wifi network and now also has private fiber installed. There are
over 20000 nodes connected to the guifi.net network now.

<http://guifi.net/en/> (sorry for the bad translations on some parts of the
page. We are working with getting them fixed.

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acabal
Very interesting to see. I had no idea there were so many community-owned
providers. That begs the question: Would community providers do deep-packet
inspection and send out copyright notices like the big telcos do? Or would
they, as community-owned enterprises, be more dumb-pipe-ish? If so, maybe
fighting anti-community-telco laws is the place to look for helping secure
internet freedom in the future.

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rmc
They would be likely to do what the record companies ask. They are small and
don't have a lot of money to fight it with legal strength. They'll fold.

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Vivtek
Well. The old rural electrification coop is back in the 21st. How about that?

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natem345
They mixed up megabyte and megabit. I highly doubt the FCC defines broadband
as above 32Mbps, as very few people in the US get such speeds (unfortunately).

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dj2stein9
Can we also get something like this going in urban and suburban areas where
cable/dsl ISP's underserve and overcharge for their broadband internet. Let's
just take these government-backed monopolist corporations out of the loop
entirely and treat internet communcations the same way as municipal electrical
lines, sewers, and roads.

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joezydeco
_Twenty years later...._

Can we get private enterprise to take this broadband service out of the hands
of this stupid, inefficient, underperforming, lowest-bidder government
monopoly? Private enterprise can do it so much better! Capitalism! Why do my
property taxes keep rising and my broadband isn't getting any faster?!?

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dj2stein9
Except you don't typically hear that about public utilities. Have you ever
heard someone argue that their sewers should be sold to private corporations
to operate because that would be cheaper?

    
    
        Private enterprise can do it so much better! Capitalism!
        Why do my property taxes keep rising and my broadband
        isn't getting any faster?!?
    

But my cable internet bill already does go up every few months without any
improvement to my bandwidth cap, or speed.

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mje__
In South Africa we have a government-run telco monopoly. We also have some of
the shittiest, most expensive internet in the world.

At least with private enterprise you can choose the least bad option.

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dbpatterson
Well, not usually in the US. The big internet providers usually section off
areas, and they don't compete. So we get the worst of both worlds - a private
(ie, unaccountable) monopoly.

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hipsters_unite
I hope this works - I'm sure plenty of people in Manchester would be prepared
to get rid of their existing provider if this succeeds elsewhere in the
county.

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walshemj
Mm resurrect Poptel then :-)

For you younguns Poptel was a cooperative and an early ISP in the UK.

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hipsters_unite
If there's a place for co-operative energy, there's a place for co-operative
ISPs... the idealist in me really wants to see that.

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speeder
Farmers are awesome.

They are the ox where the homestone rests. (I guess not much people will get
this reference)

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noonespecial
I literally got this reference thanks to Mystery Science Theater 3000. It
contains culture. Who knew?

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darxius
This was already posted earlier

