Hi everyone,
It has been hard to follow all the action here, but trying to catch up after a long break and piles of work awaiting. I will try to provide info that hopefully might be of use.
Anyway, just wanted to let you know that I contacted Bjarke Nielsen, from Djurslandsnet, the landscape community network that Carlos mentioned in his email below in Denmark. The network is alive and well. The information on their
website is in Danish, and mostly focuses on its customers (not do documenting the network for the rest of us).
It was the first large scale community network I had the chance to visit 13 years ago, and at that Fresh Air Free Networks event a lot of projects that provided training, equipment and access to knowledge for those interested in
community networks started back then.
Djurslandsnet was very wide spread and besides the technology what was more impressive was the community spirit behind it.
I contacted Bjarke Nielsen, one of its founders and yesterday he replied:
"Today it is organized in 10 area networks with each their own local board and economy and volunteers to run them.
Together the 10 networks gives high speed internet access for 1/3 of the 82000 citizens of Djursland through about 10000 end-connections, each connected to one of about 500 outdoor connection point, which have their internet access
from more than 10 high speed fiber cables spread over the peninsula. The networks have been upgraded to high speed equipment. 50 mbps down and up is normal at many places, and some places 80 mbps can be measured. A high speed internet connection with unlimited
amount of data is still much cheaper to get, than commercial tele companies delivers similar in the cities, even though most of the users are living in the rural areas, where the commercial companies still cannot deliver high speed connections, even though
they have improved over the years."
Bjarke is willing to share more info if needed...
Regards,
Sylvia Cadena
Hi All –
I am cc’ing my colleague Mark Buell on this email.
Mark has some great ties to First Nations communities in Canada and the First Mile Coalition.
He may be able to add more.
Best,
Jane
Mobile/WhatsApp: +1.202.247.8429
Hi everyone, at the GAIA meeting last week we chatted a bit about the "first" community networks.
Armin Medosch wrote a bit about them on the "The Rise of Network Commons"
http://thenextlayer.org/ The site is down now, but yesterday was up, so I guess they will solve it soon.
Marco Zennaro also mentioned a network in Denmark an some events around it that for him set somehow the beginning of the movement. Some links below. Apparently, the network is no longer operational, so it would
interesting to understand what happened for such a seminal work to stop operating.