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Engineer Gets Tired Of Waiting For Telecom Companies To Wire His town -- So He Does It Himself (backchannel.com)
Gurb, 75 kilometers north of Barcelona, is a quiet farming community of 2,500. It has suddenly become a popular place, thanks to being the birthplace of Guifi.net, one of the world's "most important experiments in telecommunications." It was built by an engineer who got tired of waiting for Telefonica, the Spanish telecom giant, to provide internet access to the people of his community. At first he wanted an internet access for himself, but it soon became clear that he also wanted to help his neighbors. Guifi has grown from a single wifi node in 2004, to 30,000 working nodes today, including some fiber connections, with thousands more in the planning stages. An article on Backchannel today documents the tale of Guifi. From the article: The project is a testament to tireless efforts -- in governance, not just in adding hardware and software -- by Ramon Roca (the engineer who started it) and his colleagues. They've been unwavering in their commitment to open access, community control, network neutrality, and sustainability. In 2004, he bought some Linksys WiFI hackable routers with a mission to get himself and his neighbors connected to the Internet. This is how he did it: Roca turned on a router with a directional antenna he'd installed at the top of a tall building near the local government headquarters, the only place in town with Internet access -- a DSL line Telefonica had run to municipal governments throughout the region. The antenna was aimed, line of sight, toward Roca's home about six kilometers away. Soon, neighbors started asking for connections, and neighbors of neighbors, and so on. Beyond the cost of the router, access was free. Some nodes were turned into "supernodes" -- banks of routers in certain locations, or dedicated gear that accomplishes the same thing -- that could handle much more traffic in more robust ways. The network connected to high-capacity fiber optic lines, to handle the growing demand, and later connected to a major "peering" connection to the global Internet backbone that provides massive bandwidth. Guifi grew, and grew, and grew. But soon it became clear that connecting more and more nodes wasn't enough, so he created a not-for-profit entity, the Guifi.net Foundation. The foundation, thanks to its cause and a cheerful community, has received over a million Euros to date -- from various sources including several levels of government. But as the article notes, a million Euros is a drop in the bucket next to the lavish subsidies and favors that state-approved monopolies such as Telefonica have enjoyed for decades. The article adds: The Guifi Foundation isn't the paid provider of most Internet service to end-user (home and business) customers. That role falls to more than 20 for-profit internet service providers that operate on the overall platform. The ISPs share infrastructure costs according to how much demand they put on the overall system. They pay fees to the foundation for its services -- a key source of funding for the overall project. Then they offer various kinds of services to end users, such as installing connections -- lately they've been install fiber-optic access in some communities -- managing traffic flows, offering email, handling customer and technical support, and so on. The prices these ISPs charge are, to this American (Editor's note: the author is referring to himself) who's accustomed to broadband-cartel greed, staggeringly inexpensive: 18 to 35 Euros (currently about $26-$37) a month for gigabit fiber, and much less for slower WiFi. Community ownership and ISP competition does wonders for affordability.
Contrast this with the U.S. broadband system, where competitive dial-up phone access -- phone companies were obliged to let all ISPs use the lines as the early commercial Internet flourished in the 1990s -- gave way to a cartel of DSL and cable providers. Except in a few places where there's actual competition, we pay way more for much less.Read the story in its entirety here.
Telecoms for prison. They betray their customers by charging high prices, and their incompetence murders packets from video streaming providers. Let's dismantle them.
Make internet open again!
Lucky for him he doesn't live in the USA, though, where the major telecom companies probably would've gotten the state legislature to outlaw it.
I wish that Cubans had some one with that kind of courage
Okay, any reason why the article links to the same page 4 times?
https://backchannel.com/forget-comcast-heres-the-diy-approach-to-internet-access-ef1e37bc09e1
https://backchannel.com/forget-comcast-heres-the-diy-approach-to-internet-access-ef1e37bc09e1
https://backchannel.com/forget-comcast-heres-the-diy-approach-to-internet-access-ef1e37bc09e1
https://backchannel.com/forget-comcast-heres-the-diy-approach-to-internet-access-ef1e37bc09e1
Is it just me, or is a "summary" that spans two full pages a bit much?
Breakfast served all day!
what about DMCA calms / child porn / other stuff? that he could of faced back when was not listed as an ISP?
I work for a small city Telco (Tbaytel) in Canada. We're one of the few left in Canada created when the original founders of our city ended up disliking Bell and ended up covering a large area of NorthWest Ontario. Internet here is actually pretty good at reasonable rates and completely without download or upload limits. The only real limitation is speed depending on service but otherwise it's a reasonably good service. The competition between Tbaytel and the National Telco's is fierce but it has resulted in better services and savings I believe. The city owns the telco so a fair chunk of profits goes back to our community. So yes, it isn't impossible to have a provider that's partially government / commercial that isn't a complete rip-off to consumers.
... of course, they were only dealing with 9600 baud at first, but then again, it was the 1970s:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
There were other WISPs in the US ... I know West Virginia, where it was easier to use line-of-sight radio to a mountaintop antenna than try to string cable. But there was no WiFi standard back then ... you had to use WaveLAN or other proprietary standards (so you had to buy both ends of the link from the same company).
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
This is how it is done. Stop complaining about Internet service and build one! There is one in SoCal made by and for ham radio people that is finally getting some momentum. It will connect San Diego to Ventura and Riverside soon. This particular project doesn't connect to the Internet, but it is an example of what can be done with volunteers and without any revenue.
soon enough Telefonica will complain to the gov't and they will get him shut down somehow. Gotta protect the corporations and their profits from competition, after all.
Wait. Isn't this leeching bandwidth from the local government? I'm surprised that the telco didn't say "hey, their bandwidth use is going through the roof, let's investigate this"
That's how a couple of bicycle builders in the USA invented the 1st heavier-than-air manned flying machine that could maintain/gain altitude. BEFORE the FAA came into existence and made such activities (unlicensed and unapproved innovators building and flying unlicensed and unapproved and untaxed aircraft) illegal.
That's how literally over a hundred automobile companies arose in the USA before the government got involved with massive piles of regulations and whittled it all down to "the big three" who then, shielded from real competition and innovation nealy all collapsed when confronted by Japanese innovators and more-recently nearly collapsed again.
The examples in the USA and elsewhere are nearly endless. Freedom and liberty are ALWAYS best. Sadly the tech industry in the US has become wedded to the party of massive government, primarily for its total support for imported cheap labor and offshore manufacturing by slave labor. This was an industry that arose and became great in the nearly unregulated tech sectors in the days before government took note, an industry that USED to crave small government and few regulations, but now as a mature sector now craves government regulatory capture and an escape hatch for the supply-and-demand economic laws where labor is concerned.
And I thought Comcast was bad.
I don't need the bloody article now thanks to your summary, you fucking arse cunt please stop
* delete as applicable.
1. so there WAS internet to begin with (in the gov't building)
2. he installed a pringles can type directional wifi antenna, like my father and thousands elsewhere
3. he worked out some network for further sharing
4. pirating, etc. source known?
5. somehow fiber optics then just appered and later on some T1? How is this *not* being served by telecom, and who absorbs network usage costs?
Back in the 70s I lived on an island which had community built, public access cable TV and water supply.
The shared water supply is still operating.
Go well
Gentle reminder:
The stock market collapse of 1929 did not in fact happen absent of government regulations. It was in fact not the first stock market collapse and as 2008 provesno the last. The government response to the 1929 collapse, however, converted what was a gdepression outside the US into "the Great Depression" inside the US. You'd know that if you looked at the data and actually studies the history. Oh, and the 2008 collapse happened within a framework of regulations larger than any financial regulations before it in US history. Even the Clinton-era repeal of Glass-Steagall did not reduce the total regulatory weight upon banks, it only changed the regulations to favor rich lobbyists and investors even more. Those regulations do not make things safe; they make certain people morewealthy.
Do you really have THAT low of a view of the country, and that warped of a perspective of history? All those things you claim were so awful were so much worse elsewhere in the world at those times and most were improved more by advancing technology than by the advancements of self-serving politicians and hoardes of self-serving lawyers.
Children as slave labor? REALLY? Until Republicans came along and stopped them, Democrats used to own black slaves too! See how that works? I guess without Republicans,blacks would all still be the property of Democrats. Do you like THAT sort of spin?
LA smog in the seventies? Do you realize how much of that was eliminated by the initial basic smag controls and how very little of it percentage wise was affected by the vast regulations that were added on top?
You have illustrated one of the basic problems with modern political dialog. You perfectly display one of the nastly old Saul Alinsky tactics. Somebody points to the damage done by massive piles of government regulations, and you respond by citing "horrors" that occured with NO regulations, or with bad regulations, or with a subset of the current huge pile of regulations whose presence has NOTHING to do with the horrors you recite. You pretend that the alternative to tens of thousands of regulations that NOBODY understands [including the politicians who pretend to have written them] is total chaos. You know this is a lie. Huge piles of regulations are not required to ban child labor, just two sentences will do: one that sets a minimum working age and another that sets the penalty. A half-dozen government agencies are not required either.
Weren't these the same guys that got nailed by the Ubiquite wireless AP router worm a little while back because they didn't update their firmware in a timely basis?
On the community side of things people did the same thing and created their own networks which still thrive today. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
One of the most successfully is Air-Stream Wireless Inc. in Adelaide, South Australia.
Back then (2001) dialup was common and DSL was expensive or not available. People take it into their own hands and created their own fast 24/7 netoworks. As the community grew these smaller groups joined an incorporated association which mainly helps with legal stuff and insurance. It also keeps the network afloat.
Now VPNs over the world wide web are linking other community networks such as WACAN in Western Australia and Melbourne Wireless in Victoria. Thanks to initial planning by Sydney Wireless early on each region has an allocated IP address space. http://www.sydneywireless.com/...
Now with spying and data retention by governments these networks have become extremely valuable.
Go and find a network near you or create your own!
It's Spain. They currently have real problems and can't be bothered with your imaginary ones.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
...except for all the others. It's something everyone wants and becoming something everyone needs. That's the time to keep it out of the hands of any entity that's looking to put making it a profitable venture ahead of making it as good as it can be.