Catalonia: Guifi.net, scaling up a community network
Citizen-driven access initiatives such as community networks are often considered as the last and least “serious” option to bring connectivity to regions or sectors of the population unattended by the “serious” options – that is, private sector and publicly funded deployments (which in many cases ar...
| Authors: | , , , |
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| Format: | book part |
| Publication Date: | 2018 |
| Country: | España |
| Institution: | Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC) |
| Repository: | UPCommons. Portal del coneixement obert de la UPC |
| Language: | English |
| OAI Identifier: | oai:upcommons.upc.edu:2117/416533 |
| Online Access: | https://hdl.handle.net/2117/416533 |
| Access Level: | Open access |
| Keyword: | Community networks Connectivity guifi.net Àrees temàtiques de la UPC::Enginyeria de la telecomunicació::Telemàtica i xarxes d'ordinadors |
| Summary: | Citizen-driven access initiatives such as community networks are often considered as the last and least “serious” option to bring connectivity to regions or sectors of the population unattended by the “serious” options – that is, private sector and publicly funded deployments (which in many cases are carried out by the same companies doing the market-driven deployments). guifi.net is a community network with tens of thousands of working nodes, and hundreds of volunteers, professionals and public administrations involved. It proves that community networks not only can deliver “serious” services to unattended areas (e.g. fibre to rural areas), but that this can be done in a very efficient way, converting almost all investment in deployment into profitable deployments, socially and economically. This in turn refutes another globally accepted assumption imposed by “the establishment”: that some regions as well as some sectors of the population will always need to be subsidised. |
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