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Wireless Community Networks: Towards a Public Policy for the Network Commons

The history of communication technologies is populated with conflicts between centralization and decentralization. While many of these technologies started or have existed at some point of their development as a decentralized structure, often replacing older technological paradigms, nearly all progressively evolved into concentrated clusters of power as a result of industrialization and of the reaffirmation of state sovereignty, following a Schumpeterian process of “creative-destruction”. However, when the needs of citizens turn out to be systematically overlooked in existing power dynamics, decentralized initiatives may emerge as an attempt to disrupt the dominant hegemony and allow for the democratic re-appropriation of technology – a process that the philosopher Andrew Feenberg calls “subversive rationalization.” In this paper, we focus on an ongoing – though too often neglected – phenomenon of decentralization in telecommunications networks. We show that current telecoms regulation significantly overlooks the contribution of community networks in fostering political and socio-economic objectives associated with broadband policy and we propose a number of policy recommendations to overcome this gap.

Alternative Communications Networks Throughout History

This report explores the history of alternative communication technologies and networks (“alternets”). It focuses on three historic formations of alternets: 1) the community telephone networks of the late 19th and early 20th century, 2) the Free Radio movement of the 1960’s and 1970’s, and 3) the first generation of community networks providing Internet access in the 1990’s. For each of these movements, the deliverable offers case studies of specific alternets in various countries, mostly in Europe but also in North America. For each of them, we focus on key issues of the netCommons project such as the governance of networks, their long-term sustainability and technological aspects, as well as the political and legal hurdles they faced. The report concludes by drawing parallels and lessons that may be relevant to guide the actions of today’s community networks.