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.
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.
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.
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.