Community networks on the web

Zenzeleni highlighted as a case study in the Prosperity Fund annual report 2019 to 2020 - UK AID:

Check out Page 27

The Toronto Mesh Community Network (where @benhylau participates) has gone through a very interesting design process. It’s outcome is summarized in the documents and video stored here for public share: https://cloud.tomesh.net/s/b3m23t4ySET5SZW

I think it is an interesting design process that we could learn from, as it draws from many models like the canvas model, in a very direct and applied way.

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Read about the catalytic story by Associação Brasileira do Rádio Digital (ABRADIG)
and Instituto Socioambiental (ISA) of this community network using High Frequency or HF radio titled “Community Networks Stories: A digital communications system geared to the needs and local context of remote communities in the Amazon”
https://www.apc.org/node/37029

The original Portuguese version found here:

Dynamic Spectum Alliance Global Summit 2020 talk about Alternative Communication Models for Connecting Communities, where Community Networks are mentioned:

DEF organizes each year an event Called Community Networks Exchange (CNX).
These are the recordings of this year’s edition.

This year the Internet Governance Forum happened online, and so many good sessions about Community Networks happened.

Here you can find the one about Community Network, Electricity and Digital Inclusion, where policy was discussed!

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Contribution from Civil Society to Ethiopia Communications Authority Public Consultation on Universal Access Fund.

Contribution from Civil Society to Anatel’s, Brazil’s regulator, Public Consultation on simplifying the telecommunication operator’s licensing framework.

The Partnership for Public Access has released a declaration requesting to urgently get “Every Community Connected”: https://p4pa.net/2020-declaration/
The launch online session can be seen here:


cc @infrared

A paper about “Women and the Sustainability of Rural Community Networks in the Global South” written by Nicola Bidwell:
https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/3392561.3394649

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A recap from the Internet Society on how people from around the world worked together with them to help connect everyone using community networks.

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Proceedings report from the IID seminar: “Building Profitable and Sustainable Community Owned Connectivity Networks”.

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The new ‘Measuring Digital Development: Facts and figures 2020’ report estimates that 3.7 billion people were not connected to the Internet: https://www.itu.int/en/myitu/News/2020/12/11/08/36/Universal-connectivity-urgency-billions-offline-Doreen-Bogdan-Martin

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Mexican supreme court decision on TIC’s case determined that nonprofit and indigenous operators shouldn’t pay taxes for spectrum: https://www.jornada.com.mx/notas/2021/01/13/politica/pueblos-indigenas-deben-estar-excentos-del-pago-de-la-lfd-scjn/

This manual was created by IIT Bombay, bringing information about small solar-powered systems for students who live in remote rural villages and are unable to attend online classes due to power outage: https://online.fliphtml5.com/gnel/wacl/#p=1

Hey folks, I’m working on an open source web browser that mixes different p2p protocols together with the web. Kinda like Beaker, but for different protocols and more minimal.

One of my goals with it is to make it easier to author and distribute content over local (mesh) networks. Distributing apps on mesh networks usually involves a bunch of technical know-how and build tooling or some sort of server managed by tech people.

With the p2p web, folks could author small websites or apps right from within their web browsers and exchange them with others over the mesh without needing to worry about platforms or bundling or networking and all that.

Would y’all be interested in talking some time about whether we could collaborate to get some of these things into peoples hands on your networks? Or if there are use cases you can think of that we could focus on.

Source code: https://github.com/AgregoreWeb/agregore-browser

There’s an overview (more tech-focused) on it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciRWmEhL8e8

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This article on GenderIT.org discusses domestic work and women in community networks based on an experience in Brazil (available in Spanish):
Trabajo doméstico y falta de liderazgo de las mujeres en las redes comunitarias | GenderIT.org

There is an interesting chapter in this book about CN and Zenzeleni’s Response to COVID-19:

ALTERNATIVE PERSPECTIVES ON RELATIONALITY, PEOPLE AND TECHNOLOGY DURING A PANDEMIC: ZENZELENI NETWORKS IN SOUTH AFRICA by NIC BIDWELL & SOL LUCA DE TENA (p. 179)

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