What do community internets look like?
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[LINK TO ARTICLE] "How a group of neighbors created their own Internet service
Powered by radios in trees, homegrown network serves 50 houses on Orcas Island." November 1, 2015
On Orcas Island in the Pacific North West of the United States of America, a group of 50 neighbours created their own internet service after internet service providers (ISP) would not help get internet to the island, it is maintained and funded by members of the community.
[LINK TO ARTICLE] "How a rural community built South Africa’s first ISP owned and run by a cooperative"
November 27, 2017
In Mankosi, South Africa, the cooperative Zenzeleni, set up an Internet Service Provider (ISP). The community is responsible for sharing it and taking care of their internet.
[LINK TO WEBSITE] Zenzeleni Cooperative
[LINK TO ARTICLE] Indigenous communities built their own internet. Here's how.
Locally-run, community-based networks are filling in where the government has failed to eliminate the digital divide.
March 14, 2021
Tribal Digital Village, an initiative from the Southern California area, works to connect tribal and rural communities to the internet, works with communities to set up high-speed wireless networks. They emphasize that it has to be the community that builds it as they’re the ones who will operate it.
Community networks can serve as a redistribution of power into the hands of the community. Even deeper, operating a community network supports a larger claim for Indigenous peoples: sovereignty. “I think it's really a huge benefit for a tribe and the tribal government," Buell said. "Because they are sovereign nations, if they have the capacity to manage their own telecommunication services… they can control how they communicate, they can increase or decrease the opportunities for their people. They can do all kinds of different things that they control on their own.”

[source: https://mashable.com/article/how-indigenous-communities-build-their-own-internet]
"Zenzeleni Cooperatives are the legal internet service providers. Cooperative members are chosen by the community and their role is to run the cooperative for the benefit of the community. The cooperatives own, govern, operate and maintain the network within their respective communities. They offer services to their community members, schools, business and other organisations, and re-invest the income back into their network and communities. Cooperatives are also responsible for supporting initiatives that help communities to use the network in a meaningful way."

[source: https://zenzeleni.net/our-model/]
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“I think so many other communities could do this themselves,” he said. “There does require a little bit of technical expertise but it's not something that people can't learn. I think relying on corporate America to come save us all is just not going to happen, but if we all get together and share our resources, communities can do this themselves and be more resilient.”

[source: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/11/how-a-group-of-neighbors-created-their-own-internet-service/]
Without starting at a community level, there will be no way that the internet could be sustained by renewables.

It is also important to see what is already there to know the challenges, and benefits from community internet projects. From these case studies - common challenges were affordability, accessibility, technical knowledge gaps.

These case studies already had well connected communities that shared responsibilities for other systems, but that means a community needs to be connected and have shared responsibilities as that isn’t a given anymore and everywhere in increasingly individualistic societies.

Benefits from community internets are the connection and with that access to news, educational services, tourism, and the redistribution of power and autonomy to the community.

"The future is already here – it's just not evenly distributed."

- William Gibson
The monetary costs of connection can not be skipped over. Communities that have been able to create and maintain their internets have the resources to do so. Connecting a community to the internet is not a cheap or accessible task. It requires maintenance, care, and funds.

With less infrastructure and resources, outages can also more likely. This isn't ideal, but if ISPs are refusing to provide internet, even slow/spotty internet is better than no internet.