COMMUNITY NETWORKS
AND LOCAL ACCESS

Monthly newsletter

July 2019

The Crafter Space at Halekote, India, a partner of the Janastu community mesh radio network. Photo: Sarbani Banerjee Belur

Welcome to the 20th monthly round-up of developments impacting your local access networks.

1. Events and conferences

  • [En español] Del 6 al 8 de agosto de 2019 se desarrollará el Foro de Gobernanza de Internet para Latinoamérica y el Caribe. Este año será en La Paz, Bolivia. Leer más.

  • From 21 to 25 August 2019, the Chaos Communication Conference will bring together “thousands of hackers, technology freaks, artists and utopians” for five days in Mildenberg, Germany to “communicate, learn, hack and party together.” Read more.

  • The 2019 Asia-Pacific Regional Community Networks Summit will take place 29 August in in Bangkok, Thailand. Read more.

  • Our Networks is a conference taking place in Toronto from 20 to 22 September, focused on all aspects of the decentralised web – from mesh networking to P2P applications to commons governance. Read more. 

  • [En español] Del 11 al 15 de septiembre de 2019, el Taller sobre tecnologías de redes internet para América Latina sucederá en Guatemala. Leer más.  

  • The 2019 Workshop for Latin America and the Caribbean (WALC) on internet network technologies will take place in Guatemala on 11-15 September. Read more. 

  • Offline Camp, a four-day retreat to explore Offline First development and design, is taking place 27-30 September 2019. Scholarships for participation are available. Read more. 

  • Registration for on-site participants in the 2019 Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in Berlin is open until 1 November. Read more. 

  • The 2019 Indigenous Connectivity Summit will bring together indigenous leaders, community members, community network operators, internet service providers, researchers and policy makers on 12-15 November in Hilo, Hawaii. Read more. 

2. Resources from past events

  • Slides from many of the presentations at Battlemesh V12, a conference on wireless networks and open source software held this July in France, are now available here.  

  • [Em português] Coolab participou do BattleMesh e eles compartilharam sua experiência aqui. 

  • DWeb Camp brought together more than 375 campers from six continents to build and strengthen the community working on the decentralised web. The Internet Archive offers a great summary of the experience here. Taeyoon Choi shares some impressions of the event here and videos of some of the lightning talks held during the camp can be viewed here and here. 

  • cynthia el-khoury and Carlos Rey-Moreno were interviewed about community networks by the Internet Freedom Festival (IFF) team, who shared their insights on the IFF wiki. Read more.  

  • Presentations at the Commonwealth Telecommunications Organisation’s Commonwealth Spectrum Management Forum 2019, held in June, are now available here.  

  • [Em português] Thiago Novaes de Coolab partilha a sua participação no Fórum Europeu de Gestão do Espectro aqui. 

  • The outcomes of Artful Integrations of Infrastructures by Community-Based Telecoms, a workshop guided by Nic Bidwell in which many community networks participated, are available here.

3. Community networks in news and blogs

  • As part of the “Connecting the Unconnected” project being implemented by APC and Rhizomatica, Sarbani Banerjee Belur of Gram Marg, an India-based member of the project’s peer learning community, recently visited the Janastu Community Mesh Radio Network in the village of Halekote, India, where she learned more about their efforts to enable community participation by young girls and women. Read more.

  • [En español] En una entrevista a prensa de LACNIC, Lilian Chamorro Rojas de Colnodo nos cuenta como ha sido el proceso en redes comunitarias en Colombia apoyado por FRIDA. Leer más. 

  • [En español] Atalaya Sur exige acceso al Fondo de Acceso Universal para cerrar la brecha digital. Leer más. AlterMundi también expresó su posición aquí, de la que APC se hizo eco. 

  • [En español] Muy buen debate sobre las necesidades de las Redes Comunitarias en Argentina, un panel organizado por NIC Argentina con participación de los representantes del gobierno Argentino y dos redes comunitarias, AlterMundi y Atalaya Sur. Leer más y ver el video asociado aquí.

  • BOSCO Uganda has initiated a new partnership with UNICEF for the roll-out of the Kolibri free and open source education technology platform. Watch a video about the experience here. BOSCO also shares insights about how technology is being embraced by women in Northern Uganda. Read more.

  • [En español] AlterMundi cuenta sobre la actividad realizada por el Semillero de redes comunitarias cocreado junto a Rhizomatica, llevada a cabo en México junto con redes comunitarias de Colombia y Brazil. Leer más. 

  • [Em português] O Instituto Bem Estar Brasil participou da primeira edição do Semillero de redes comunitárias no México. Ler aqui. 

  • [En español] Rhizomatica comparte un video sobre las diferencias entre telefonía comunitaria y comercial aquí. 

  • [En español] @CITSAC_ nos platica sobre la promoción de procesos de comunicación y telecomunicaciones comunitarias e indígenas aquí y comparte un resumen del evento de su inauguración aquí. 

  • Broadband for the Rural North (B4RN) members share their backyards to connect each other with fibre and to the internet. The organisation shared its experiences in an interview with Restart Radio. Listen to the podcast here. 

  • B4RN is also celebrating after raising three million pounds to support the ongoing rollout of a community-built and funded 1 Gbps Fibre-to-the-Home (FTTH) broadband network across remote parts of several counties. Read more. 

  • [En español] El capítulo Colombia de Internet Society en conjunto con la universidad de Cundinamarca hicieron un webinar acerca de las redes comunitarias y su trabajo en las veredas de su comunidad. Ver el video aquí. 

  • As part of its Connecting the Unconnected project, APC convened a community networks meeting in Nairobi, Kenya, between 30 April and 3 May 2019. Read more. 

  • [En español] NIC.AR hace un resumen de porque las redes comunitarias son importantes. Leer más. 

  • Locally run ISPs offer the fastest broadband in the United States. Read more. 

  • [En español] Sebastián Bellagamba de Internet Society nos comparte el efecto de las redes sociales, y las redes comunitarias. Leer más.

  • Talant Sultanov offers his perspectives on how community networks help foster active citizen participation in the global South. Read more.

4. Gendering community networks

  • [Español] As part of the “Connecting the Unconnected” project being implemented by APC and Rhizomatica, Sarbani Banerjee Belur of Gram Marg, an India-based member of the project’s peer learning community, recently visited the Janastu Community Mesh Radio Network in the village of Halekote, India, where she learned more about their efforts to enable community participation by young girls and women. Read more. 
  • [En español] En una entrevista a prensa de LACNIC, Lilian Chamorro Rojas de Colnodo nos cuenta como ha sido el proceso en redes comunitarias en Colombia apoyado por FRIDA. Leer más.
  • BOSCO shares insights about how technology is being embraced by women in Northern Uganda. Read more.
  • A recently launched research report from the Alliance for Affordable Internet (A4AI) explores women’s experiences of social media taxation in East and Southern Africa. Read more.

5. News on policy and regulation

  • [Español] Conectados por Facebook, ¿Internet para quién? explora las problemáticas que el acuerdo entre el gobierno de México y Facebook podrían tener, y las alternativas como las redes comunitarias para conectar a los desconectados. Leer más. 

  • [En español] Las Redes Comunitarias colaboran con cerrar la brecha digital en América Latina: 13 redes comunitarias lo hacen. Leer más. 

  • [En español] Durante la CLT19, Digital Policy & Law hizo una cobertura ámplia, haciendo múltiples entrevistas y compartiendo las visiones de diferentes actores a como las redes comunitarias pueden cerrar la brecha digital. Leer más. Adriana Labardini compartió su visión sobre cómo utilizando el fondo de acceso universal las redes comunitarias pueden contribuir a reducir la brecha digital. Leer más. Todos los videos de la conferencia están disponibles aquí. Ver también la cobertura de AlterMundi del evento, específicamente sobre los Fondos de Acceso Universal, aquí. 

  • [En español] El Instituto Federal de Telecomunicaciones de México (IFT) pone sobre la mesa la necesidad de redes comunitarias en el país. Leer más.  

  • [En español] IFT quiere que más redes comunitarias lleven Internet a poblaciones indígenas. Leer más. 

  • Ghana is increasing the Communications Service Tax to 9%, making it harder for communities to access telecommunication services. Read more here and here. 

  • Steve Song coins the concept of LocalRating as a pun on zero rating, and looks at how OTT services affect access to connectivity in Africa. Read more. 

  • Kira Allman interviewed Steve Song about “Rights to the Network: Community Internet and Access to Infrastructure”. Watch here. The interview was part of the Global Media & Policy Seminar Series hosted by the University of Oxford and the University of Johannesburg. Learn more here. 

6. Research

  • The research report “Bottom-up Connectivity Strategies: Community-led small-scale telecommunication infrastructure networks in the global South”, conducted by Nicola Bidwell and Michael Jensen for APC and Rhizomatica, documents the benefits of, and challenges facing, small-scale, community-based connectivity projects. Read more. 

  • A recently launched research report from the Alliance for Affordable Internet (A4AI) explores women’s experiences of social media taxation in East and Southern Africa. Read more. 

  • [En español] Derechos Digitales publica su investigación sobre marcos regulatorios de redes comunitarias en Argentina, Brazil, Colombia y México. Leer más. 

7. Reports and publications

  • The Web Foundation reports that 196 internet shutdowns happened during 2018. This has a greater impact on communities that do not own and control their own networks and the services that run on them. Read more. 

8. Articles on technologies related to local access networks

  • WifiForward is working towards freeing up more airwaves for Wi-Fi using unlicensed spectrum bands and making the most efficient and effective use of the airwaves already available. Read more. 

  • Concern over a more centralised 5G world keeps growing. Brussels has delayed the trials of this technology because of a lack of evidence of the impact of the amount of radiation it generates. Read more. 

  • Wi-Fi NOW explains why it believes that Wi-Fi matters more as mobile markets mature. Read more. 

  • Organisational technologies that are not based on power relationships but on mutual trust and collaboration are essential in this process. The P2P Foundation talks about what peer-to-peer means and how it might change the world. Read more. 

  • The Dynamic Spectrum Alliance discusses why it is important to have shared spectrum as a solution to close the digital divide. Read more. 

9. Tools and toolkits

  • IFLA has launched a "Public Access Policy Toolkit for Libraries". Read more. 

  • Rhizomatica is working on a new project to run UUCP (Unix to Unix Copy Protocol) on top of HF radio links, a tool that might allow communities in very remote areas to have digital communications. Read more. 

  • WISH South Africa is developing a step-by-step guide to starting up a community network, ISP or wireless ISP. Read more. 

10. Funding opportunities

  • All throughout 2019, Google has an open call for policy fellowships in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, the US and Latin America. Fellows will have the opportunity to work at public interest organisations at the forefront of debates on broadband and access policy, content regulation, copyright and creativity, consumer privacy, open government, government surveillance, data security, data innovation, free expression and more. Read more. 

  • The Ford Foundation's JustFilms supports artist-driven film and new media storytelling projects that explore aspects of inequality, as well as the organisations and networks that support these projects. Read more. 

  • The Mozilla Open Source Software Fund supports open source projects used by or related to Mozilla’s mission. Read more. 

  • The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation offers support for early-stage research for which private or government funding is hard to obtain. Read more. 

  • RIPE NCC will provide EUR 250,000 per year to support projects of value to the operation and resilience of the internet. The call for applications is open until 1 September 2019. Read more.

  • Until 1 October 2019, IDRC is accepting proposals for "Strengthening education systems with proven innovations in developing contexts", in which community networks could be involved. Read more. 

  • The United Nations Democracy Fund invites civil society organisations to apply for funding for projects to advance and support democracy. The next call for applications is expected to be open from mid-November 2019. Read more. 

11. Previous editions

  • Previous editions of this newsletter are available here.
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