Re: [gaia] The European Broadband Award 2015 goes to the guifi.net community network

["L. Aaron Kaplan" <[e-mail]>]

> On 17 Nov 2015, at 18:08, Jim Forster <[e-mail]> wrote:
> 
> Roger,
> 
> Yes, I’ve talked with Ramon and read the paper,  at least sort of understand the concepts, but perhaps some examples would be useful to further understand this fascinating structure.  For instance, how are these sort of situations handled?
> 
> * Individual in a more remote area wants to join, some extra work is required to get him connected (trench fiber, or install 1-2 radio relay sites).  Work is done, he’s happy.  In theory others could use this sort of backbone, but if they don’t, how is the cost handled?
> 
> * An area already connected, with 20-50 people using some shared back bone links.  Most are very happy with the service, but a few want much faster service?  What is the process to make this decision to upgrade the backbone?  How are costs shared?   Do the 90% have to pay for for part of the upgrade?  Are the 10% out of luck if the 90% don’t want to pay for upgraded infrastructure?
> 
> * Similarly, in a area with service; speed is found to be declining.  After some investigation it’s determined that a few users are consuming most of the bandwidth on a critical backbone link.
> 

I believe the answer is: it gets fixed if possible.
:)
That’s no different to what other ISPs do.

>   — Jim
> 
> PS: Are there any other examples of this governance model for access nets beside Guifi.net?
> 
Yes!

In fact in the CONFINE project a couple of other community wireless networks participated:
  * Funkfeuer.at in Austria
  * AWMN in Greece

For a list of very similar networks to Guifi.net, see the excellent wikipedia listing:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wireless_community_networks_by_region

(there used to be a very extensive list but I could not find it now anymore - seems like it got edited away in wikipedia)


>> On Nov 17, 2015, at 6:45 AM, Roger Baig Viñas <[e-mail]> wrote:
>> 
>> Signed PGP part
>> Hi Jim,
>> 
>> It's a comprehensive ecosystem, thus, not easy, if possible at all, to
>> explain in few words. Essentially, we are deploying and operating
>> network infrastructure, including optical fibre, as a commons, where
>> participants contribute, directly by deploying themselves or indirectly
>> by funding, the infrastructure they need to extend the existing
>> infrastructure to their locations. They keep the ownership of the
>> infrastructure they contributed but, by joining the network the accept
>> its license, that is to say, they join the Common Pool Resource with its
>> rights (usage of all existing infrastructure) and duties (let other
>> participants use the newcomers' infrastructure). Services (like Internet
>> access) are delivered by ISPs using the existing infrastructure
>> according to the free market rules (now that we have guaranteed the same
>> rights of access to the infrastructure to everybody).
>> 
>> Therefore, we are putting in practice an alternative model to the two
>> traditional ones (private infrastructure and public infrastructure). To
>> do so it is needed a full stack of tools (including those for which you
>> -Jim- are asking for) to ensure scalability, resilience and
>> sustainability. We tried to outline the basics in the following paper:
>> 
>> Roger Baig, Ramon Roca, Felix Freitag, Leandro Navarro, guifi.net, a
>> crowdsourced network infrastructure held in common, Computer Networks,
>> Volume 90, 29 October 2015, Pages 150-165, ISSN 1389-1286,
>> http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.comnet.2015.07.009.
>> (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1389128615002327)
>> Keywords: Community networks; Crowdsourced networks; Self-organised
>> governance systems; Self-provisioning; Common pool resource
>> 
>> A draft version is available at:
>> 
>> English: http://people.ac.upc.edu/leandro/pubs/crowds-guifi-en.pdf
>> Castellano: http://people.ac.upc.edu/leandro/pubs/crowds_es_1.pdf
>> 
>> We know it is not enough, but it is what we have so far. Part of our
>> future work is to better document what we have already done and the
>> news we introduce.
>> 
>> 
>> Kind regards
>> 
>> On 11/17/2015 02:55 PM, Jim Forster wrote:
>> > Kudos indeed!  A wonderful success story.  I confess to not really
>> > understanding the dynamics of planning, conflict resolutions,
>> > sharing & compensation, etc., but I wish I did!
>> >
>> > Jim
>> >
>> >> On Nov 16, 2015, at 4:16 PM, Steve Song <[e-mail]
>> >> <mailto:[e-mail]>> wrote:
>> >>
>> >> Thanks for sharing this Leandro.  Kudos to all involved in
>> >> Guifi.net <http://guifi.net>.  So well deserved!
>> >>
>> >> Cheers... Steve
>> >>
>> >> On 16 November 2015 at 18:25, Leandro Navarro
>> >> <[e-mail] <mailto:[e-mail]>> wrote:
>> >>
>> >> Dear all,
>> >>
>> >> This evening we had the award ceremony in Brussels where the
>> >> guifi.net
>> >> <http://people.ac.upc.edu/leandro/pubs/crowds-guifi-en.pdf>
>> >> community network got the European Broadband Award from the
>> >> European Commission for its “innovative model of financing,
>> >> business and investment”
>> >> https://ec.europa.eu/digital-agenda/en/news/five-projects-got-first-e
>> ver-european-broadband-award
>> >
>> >>
>> > The video about guifi.net
>> >> <http://guifi.net/>: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gD3HYeD4Lm4
>> >> A paper that describes its socio-economic and governance model:
>> >> http://people.ac.upc.edu/leandro/pubs/crowds-guifi-en.pdf
>> >>
>> >> If you come to the next GAIA workshop
>> >> <http://acmdev.org/gaia.php> (London, Nov 30, colocated with the
>> >> ACM-DEV conference) you’ll be able to participate in a
>> >> world-cafe style discussion on socio-economic or
>> >> business/sustainability models of infrastructures and services
>> >> for GAIA. Guifi.net <http://guifi.net/>, among other initiatives,
>> >> will be there.
>> >>
>> >> I hope to see some of you in our next GAIA workshop, -- Leandro
>> >> Navarro http://people.ac.upc.edu/leandro http://dsg.ac.upc.edu
>> >> <http://dsg.ac.upc.edu/>
>> >>
>> >>
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>> >>
>> >> -- [phone] [e-mail]
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>> 
>> 
>> --
>> Roger Baig Viñas
>> Fundació Privada per a la Xarxa Oberta, Lliure i Neutral guifi.net
>> 
> 
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