Wireless community network

Many of these organizations set up wireless mesh networks which rely primarily on sharing of unmetered residential and business DSL and cable Internet. This sort of usage might be non-compliant with the terms of service of local internet service provider (ISPs) that deliver their service via the consumer phone and cable duopoly. Wireless community networks sometimes advocate complete freedom from censorship, and this position may be at odds with the acceptable use policies of some commercial services used. Some ISPs do allow sharing or reselling of bandwidth.

The First Latin American Summit of Community Networks, held in Argentina in 2018, presented the following definition for the term "community network": "Community networks are networks collectively owned and managed by the community for non-profit and community purposes. They are constituted by collectives, indigenous communities or non-profit civil society organizations that exercise their right to communicate, under the principles of democratic participation of their members, fairness, gender equality, diversity and plurality".

According to the Declaration on Community Connectivity, elaborated through a multistakeholder process organized by the Internet Governance Forum's Dynamic Coalition on Community Connectivity, community networks are recognised by a list of characteristics: Collective ownership; Social management; Open design; Open participation; Promotion of peering and transit; Promotion of the consideration of security and privacy concerns while designing and operating the network; and promotion of the development and circulation of local content in local languages.

History

Wireless community networks started as projects that evolved from amateur radio using packet radio, and from the free software community which substantially overlapped with the amateur radio community. Wireless neighborhood networks were established by technology enthusiasts in the early 2000s. The Redbricks Intranet Collective (RIC) started 1999 in Manchester, UK, to allow about 30 flats in the Bentley House Estate to share the subscription cost of one leased line from British Telecom (BT). Wi-Fi was quickly adopted by technology enthusiasts and hobbyists, because it was an open standard and consumer Wi-Fi hardware was comparatively cheap.

Wireless community networks started out by turning wireless access points designed for short-range use in homes into multi-kilometre long-range Wi-Fi by building high-gain directional antennas. Rather than buying commercially available units, some of the early groups advocated home-built antennas. Examples include the cantenna and RONJA, an optical link that can be made from a smoke flue and LEDs. The circuitry and instructions for such DIY networking antennas were released under the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL). Municipal wireless networks, funded by local governments, started being deployed from 2003 onward.

Regarding the international policy scenario, discussions on Community Networks have gained prominence over the last few years, especially since the creation of the Internet Governance Forum's Dynamic Coalition on Community Connectivity in 2016, providing "a much needed platform through which various individuals and entities interested in the advancement of CNs have the possibility to associate, organise and develop, in a bottom-up participatory fashion collective 'principles, rules, decision-making procedures and shared programs that give shape to the evolution and use of the Internet.'".

Early community projects

By 2003, a number of wireless community projects had established themselves in urban areas across North America, Europe and Australia. In June 2000, Melbourne Wireless Inc. was established in Melbourne Australia as a not-for-profit project to establish a metropolitan area wireless network using off-the-shelf 802.11 wireless equipment. By 2003, it had 1,200 hotspots. In 2000 Seattle Wireless was founded with the stated aim of providing free WiFi access and share the cost of Internet connectivity in Seattle, USA. By April 2011, it had 80 free wireless access points all over Seattle and was steadily growing.

In August 2000, Consume was founded in London England as "collaborative strategy for the self provisioning of a broadband telecommunications infrastructure". Founded by Ben Laurie and others, Consume aimed to build a wireless infrastructure as alternative to the monopoly-held wired metropolitan area network. Besides providing Wi-Fi access in East London, Consume installed a large antenna on the roof of the former Greenwich Town Hall and documented the states of wireless connections in London. Consume created political pressure on municipal authorities, by staging public events, exhibitions, encouraging consumers to set up wireless equipment and setting up temporary Wi-Fi hotspots at events in East London. While Consume generated sustained media attention, it did not establish a lasting wireless community network.

The Wireless Leiden hobbyist project was established in September 2001 and constituted as non-profit foundation in 2003 with more than 300 active users. The Wireless Leiden foundation aimed to facilitate the cooperation of local government, businesses and residents to provide wireless networking in Leiden Netherlands. The first wireless community network in Spain was RedLibre, founded in September 2001 in Madrid. By 2002 RedLibre coordinated the efforts of 15 local wireless groups and maintained free RedLibre Wi-Fi hotspots in five cities. RedLibre has been credited for facilitating the widespread availability of WLAN in the urban areas of Spain.

In Italy, Ninux.org was founded by students and hackers in 2001 to create a grassroots wireless network in Rome, similar to Seattle Wireless. A turning point for Ninux was the lowering of prices in 2008 for consumer wireless equipment, such as antennas and routers. Ninux volunteers installed an increasing number of antennas on the roofs of Rome. The network served as example for other urban community wireless networks in Italy. By 2016, similar wireless networks had been installed in Florence, Bolongna, Pisa and Cosenza. While they share common technical and organizational frameworks, the working groups supporting these urban wireless community networks are driven by the different needs of the city in which they operate.

Houston Wireless was founded in summer 2001 as the Houston Wireless Users Group. The telecommunications providers were slow to roll out third-generation wireless (3G), so Houston Wireless was established to promote high-speed wireless access across Houston and its suburbs. Houston Wireless experimented with network protocols such as IPsec, mobile IP and IPv6, as well as wireless technologies, including 802.11a, 802.11g and ultra-wideband (UWB). By 2003, it had 30 WLAN hotspots, 100 people on their mailing lists and their monthly meetings were attended by about 25 people.

NYCwirelsss was established in New York City in May 2001 to provide public hotspots and promote the use of consumer owned unlicensed low-cost wireless networking equipment. In order to get more public Wi-Fi hotspots installed, NYCwirelsss contracted with the for-profit company Cloud Networks, which was staffed by some of the founding members of the NYCwireless community project. In the aftermath of the September 11 attacks in 2001 NYCwirelsss helped to provide emergency communication by quickly assembling and deploying free Wi-Fi hotspots in areas of New York City that had no other telecommunications. In summer 2002, the Bryant Park wireless network became the flagship project of NYCwireless, with about 50 users every day. By 2003 NYCwireless had more than 100 active hotspots throughout New York City.

Early project in rural areas

In 2000, guifi.net was founded because commercial internet service providers did not build a broadband Internet infrastructure in rural Catalonia. Guifi.net was conceived as a wireless mesh network, where households can become a node in the network by operating a radio transmitter. Not every node needs to be a wireless router, but the network relies on some volunteers being connected to the Internet and sharing that access with others. In 2017 guifi.net had 23,000 nodes and was described as the biggest mesh network in the world.

In 2001, BCWireless founded to help communities in British Columbia, Canada, set up local Wi-Fi networks. BCWireless hobbyists experimented with IEEE 802.11b wireless networks and antennas to extend the range and power of signal, allow bandwidth sharing among local group members and establish wireless mesh networks. The Lac Seul First Nation communities set up their Wi-Fi network and constituted the non-profit K-Net to manage a wireless network based on IEEE 802.11g to provide the entire reserve with Wi-Fi using the unlicensed spectrum in combination with licensed spectrum at 3.5 GHz.

Co-operation between community networks

For the most, early wireless community projects had a local scope, but many still had a global awareness. In 2003, wireless community networks initiated the Pico Peering Agreement (PPA) and the Wireless Commons Manifesto. The two initiatives defined attempts to build an infrastructure, so that local wireless mesh networks could become extensive wireless ad hoc networks across local and national boundaries. In 2004, Freifunk released the OpenWrt-based firmware FFF for Wi-Fi devices that participate in a community network, which included a PPA, so that the owner of the node agrees to provide free transit across the network.