Engineer Gets Tired Of Waiting For Telecom Companies To Wire His town -- So He Does It Himself (backchannel.com) 106
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.
Make internet open again! (Score:1)
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!
Impressive (Score:5, Insightful)
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False. What telecoms — correctly — object to, are efforts by local governments to compete with them. Private businesses, individuals, or non-profits are fine...
Re:Impressive (Score:5, Informative)
Just look at the city of Tacoma, WA, who built their own fiber network and cable TV operator, when previously the city had a single monopoly provider with very low quality of service and more expensive than surrounding areas with better competition. The city FORCED competition into the market by entering it themselves.
Re:Impressive (Score:5, Interesting)
My local muni which is in the middle of republican paradise fought for years to build there own Fiber ISP. They were finally allowed to do so because they span it as a boon to the local tech economy.
Well, it has been here for about 5 years and it is glorious. $55 per month for symmetrical 60Mbps, no caps, no blocked ports, no downtime, no special modems or routers required. They come and set it all up and give you a single RJ-45 for you do with as you please.
All this and it is making the city money. Not a lot, but that is how it should be.
Re:Impressive (Score:5, Insightful)
It is the worse possible solution for the government to own and operate a communications network.
Often stated but never proven.
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So the problem is privatizing it, I get it...
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No, the problem is not enforcing competition after privatisation.
Here in France the PTT (minstry of posts, telephone and telecommunications) used to have a monopoly. When they were part privatized as France Telecom a competition authority was setup who insisted that the new France Telecom allowed competing companies to have access the the existing network (that had been funded by the state).
As a result we now have multiple ISP's in almost all locations, providing multiple competing broadband solutions (ASD
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Capitalism -- it works, as long as government is prepared to stand behind the capitalists with a big enough stick.
In this country, capitalists stand behind government. Very close. And that thing isn't a stick.
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The problem is that capitalism pretty much requires that whoever has the dough buys the government.
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It is the worse possible solution for the government to own and operate a communications network.
Often stated but never proven.
This reminds me of the public option [wikipedia.org] debate. The most correct argument against allowing the government to create a non profit health plan, was that it would be unfair competition, since they would not be trying to make a profit. This is of course from the same party that would argue that anything government would be less efficient. Essentially you have contradictory arguments used against the public option, and of course, against the internet equivalent of it.
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I take it you have never worked in tech for any branch or part of the government.
I have. And it's OK until consultants and private contractors smell a profit opportunity. They undermine the gov't agency until it can neither do the work itself or properly oversee the contractors. Look at NASA (to a certain degree) and the FAA (completely pwned by industry).
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This was certainly the case with the state-owned Telkom in South Africa. Privatization of that particular behemoth led to better service and prices for consumers.
So there ya go! Proven (in my one, totally-proves-everything case (: )
Seriously though, I'd side with you mostly, but not in Africa where government is an infrastructure to facilitate back-scratching and palm-greasing, all the while conning the masses into voting for the same criminals over and over. It's taken South Africa over 2 decades to get to
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Are you kidding? It's the best possible solution, proven time and again that it either forces lazy ISPs into improving their services or simply improves the service itself.
As European ISPs prove (Europe, remember? That socialist paradise where wages are horribly expensive because even a burger flipper has a medical plan and hence employers have to ask outrageous prices 'cause every worker costs them an arm and a leg) it IS possible to be competitive when offering unmetered gigabit fiber plans for 40ish buck
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Re:Impressive (Score:5, Interesting)
Local governments, you must mean those things made up of the people in the community joined together ( in theory) for the common good? A sort of co-op like thingy?
Actually, they'd have lawyered him to death over right of way as soon as the first cable appeared. That is if they didn't beat him to death with franchise agreements first.
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I mean the city hall, however you want to spin it.
And, before you ask, it is those pillars of the community you suddenly love and respect so much, who are responsible for shortage of Internet-service options in most locales in the US [wired.com], where competing providers want your money.
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Apparently not. Even where freely permitted, ISPs have been shown to carefully divide things up down to the level of which side of the street you live on.
Also making crooked deals with apartment and condo complexes.
Not to mention making it clear to townships that they had no plans to provide high-speed internet but then suing when the township decides to do it for themselves after a democratic referendum. Then they lobbied hard to get states to ban municipal internet even when the people voted for it direct
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I figured since you are here on /., you might have read the several articles documenting that. I cannot be responsible for your failing memory. You might want to see a doctor, it may still be reversible.
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Apparently not. Even where freely permitted, ISPs have been shown to carefully divide things up down to the level of which side of the street you live on.
Just in case anyone wondered, have seen these exact things in a few European countries ...
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A sort of co-op like thingy?
No, government is not a co-op.
The Guifi Foundation sounds like a co-op though. They work fine here in the US too; my electricity supplier is a rural electric co-op. [nreca.coop] Maybe you should start something similar for internet.
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Of course not. The further removed the representatives are from the population they represent, the less likely they are to do their job properly.
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None of the municipal ISPs I am aware of are in any way mandated monopolies. Others are welcome to come in and compete, no guns involved. Many were set up at arm's length, expected to pay back their startup costs. In many cases they happened after the area ISPs already stated flatly that they would NOT service the area. So it's not like they were clamoring to compete. If there was a gun, it was wielded by the invisible hand.
Interestingly, they sued after having refused to service an area, presumably because
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The situation in Spain [quora.com] seems even worse than in the US — whereas we have multiple locally-dominating behemoths, they have a single giant formerly state-owned one.
Yes, and they refuse your money, when you say you wish to use them for uplink, right...
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Telecoms object to competition. The fact that local governments are involved gets the anarchists happy as a side effect. When a telecom has effectively nullified all private competition then it is the job of government to step in. Everyone should like seeing small local democratically elected governmenst being allowed to make decisions that their citizens ask for, except for some radical anti-government kooks.
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Everybody objects to competition. That's a meaningless truism.
But in this case telecoms have a legal point — nobody should be getting preferential treatment from the city hall.
You mean, like the poisoning of Socrates? That's your "democracy in action"...
Sorry, but I'd like to keep the country, where guarantees given to an Individual, however obnoxious and cantankerous,
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No, the citizens have decided to elect people to try and get competion, reversing the mistakes in the past that gave the telecoms preferential treatments. Governments give preferential treatmeans all the damn time - from trade deals with foreign nations, to tariffs, sole supplier agreements with defense contractors, to deciding who's going to be the asshole cable company that gets the monopoly, etc. If preferential treatments are bad then there are much bigger fish to fry than with city hall being asked t
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Sorry, no. It is correct. It is trivial to come up with examples where the free market only managed to end up in a cartel but you will probably have a hard time coming up with examples where the free market led to self correction.
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In most cases, monopolies are established by the government. Removing the government restrictions instead of setting up the government as a competitor is usually a better solution.
"The needs of the people" is a remarkably plastic concept, showing little agreement between different people. Someone claiming to know (and to provide) "the needs of the people" is likely to be a fraud or worse.
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It is clear that the Telecoms certainly don't know the needs of the people.
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Having you on record objecting to — indeed, jeering — the Individual human rights is enough for one evening. Living in the city, according to you, one surrenders his rights — and anyone objecting must be having severe dental problem... Ok...
Next time you peep about an unwarranted search or some other violation of an Individual's freedom by the Collective, I'll have a handy link to rub into your face.
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When I said, an Individual's rights ought trump the Collective's wishes, you called me a "toothless hillbilly". That, really, is all anybody needs to know about your political opinion.
Why should I believe you? You haven't posted a single actual fact or even a sensible opinion in the months of rather active Slashdot participation.
No, "believe me" is not going to work. Remember to logout.
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Believe it, or not... Doesn't matter. I'm easy. Can't help it if you live in denial.
And you look really silly trying to play the PC card with me. Tryin' to find sympathy because you're not allowed to empty your piss pot on the sidewalk? Good luck with that!
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What telecoms — correctly — object to, are efforts by local governments to compete with them.
You are wrong. We have the right to make the government serve us, instead of protecting their buddies' monopoly/duopolies. Competition is the only way to keep them honest.
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> What telecoms — correctly — object to, are efforts by local governments to compete with them. ...yeah, they don't permit competition from their subsidiaries.
If that were something besides pro-telecom BS, there would be more than two competing businesses, individuals, or non-profits in most American markets. America's the Land of Entrepreneurs - you don't think anybody in America had this guy's idea? Those folks were almost all shut down, generally by clubbing them with a compliant govern
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So we always have just the two offerings, who have, mysteriously, the same price, though they use completely different infrastructures. Just like TV happens to cost the same whether delivered by cables that were paid off by the early 90s, or satellites 40,000km overhead. What are the odds such different technologies would cost exactly the same to the consumer?
You betray an utter lack of understanding of economics in general and business in particular.
The price is not a function of costs, as you mistakenly believe, but of the balance between supply and demand.
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What are the odds such different technologies would cost exactly the same to the consumer?
The price is not a function of costs, as you mistakenly believe, but of the balance between supply and demand.
Price is a function of supply and demand, so if you artificially restrict the supply, then you can raise price arbitrarily high without affecting the cost. This is how you profit. In an actual, free market, a large difference between market price and cost of service should attract new businesses until the market price is close to the cost of service. This is known as an efficient market. The US telecom market is horribly inefficient, as witnessed by cable providers gross profit margin of 97% [huffingtonpost.com].
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False. What telecoms â" correctly â" object to, are efforts by local governments to compete with them. Private businesses, individuals, or non-profits are fine...
No, they use the regulators to "deny" pole access to startups that could fleetly compete.
Yes, you "can" get pole access, but it'll cost you a quarter million dollars in legal fees. That ensures that the big boys can play but not anything like the ISP in TFS or anybody who could really compete on cost structure.
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>False. What telecoms â" correctly â" object to, are efforts by local governments to compete with them. Private businesses, individuals, or non-profits are fine...
No. They lock up the last mile and do everything they can to stop private competition as well. If you're lucky enough to live in a densely populated and affluent area, you might be able to get high speed internet through microwave (the pricing is actually pretty competitive), otherwise you're going to be stuck choosing between the two
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False. What telecoms — correctly — object to, are efforts by local governments to compete with them. Private businesses, individuals, or non-profits are fine...
As long as the private businesses are part of the cartel.
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Redundancy.
Is it just me... (Score:2)
Is it just me, or is a "summary" that spans two full pages a bit much?
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You get to know the story without RTFA!
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If this keeps up, we'll have to only RTFA from now long! /. will be turned on its head!
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what about DMCA calms / child porn / other stuff (Score:1)
what about DMCA calms / child porn / other stuff? that he could of faced back when was not listed as an ISP?
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It's Spain. They currently have real problems and can't be bothered with your imaginary ones.
Local Telco in our Area (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Reminds me of ALOHAnet (Score:2)
... of course, they were only dealing with 9600 baud at first, but then again, it was the 1970s:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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).
Just do it. (Score:3)
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I'm aware that ham communications can be "wormholed" through the Internet, but is it legal now for hams to operate as a public ISP?
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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.
There are other hams that have created broadband mesh networks using Ubiquiti equipment (can use high power, some slivers of the 2.4GHz for just amateur radio, and cannot encrypt), some groups have a port to connect to internet. But that port is tightly controlled as don't want to be "surfing the web" visiting sites with data (smut and business) not allowed on amateur radio. I like to get in on this action, I've seen some of these places where hams set up a county wide network including VOIP phones. And th
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The same freedom and liberty that wipe out trillions of dollars of savings in the collapse of 1929? or in the S&L crisis of the 80s? or the collapse of the housing market due to "innovative" accounting techniques and financial instruments in the early 2000s? Or the too-thick-to-see-through smog of LA in the 70s? Or the liberty and freedom that let millions of pounds of coal ash pollute and clog the rivers of NC? Or let Standard Oil wage actual warfare to corner the market by bombing competitors well sit
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It's worth noting that pollution generally is a failure to properly encode (i.e. make good laws) and enforce property rights. On your property, you have a right to not have the air coming onto your property poison you.
There's nothing wrong with child labor per se, provided it doesn't harm the child or interfere with the parent's responsibility to educate and in other ways care for their children. Historically, child labor allowed children to live, who would have otherwise starved to death. Many children wan
Wow. (Score:2)
Summary (Score:3)
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?
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public utilities (Score:1)
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.