Small, community-owned ISPs are spreading – and could help to protect open internet access

Sammi-Jo Lee, writing for Coop News, gives us the lowdown on the P2P alternative to ISP big players.

Sammi-Jo Lee: In 2011, brand new fibre-optic cables lit up for the first time across the forested terrain of the Ozarks and up and down the farmlands of central Missouri, USA.

Here among the hickory and red oaks, you might expect to be in the land that the internet forgot. That’s what it could have been, had residents not decided to stop waiting for large for-profit telecommunications companies. They built their own internet instead.

They turned to their electric utility for a solution, and Co-Mo Electric Cooperative, established in 1939 to bring power to the region’s farms, answered the call.

“What got the project off the ground was the membership demand,” said Randy Klindt, who at the time was the general manager of Co-Mo Connect, the co-op’s internet branch. “The members all drove it from the grassroots. They went door to door. They paid their neighbours’ $100 deposit.”

Later at a community meeting, a local bank surprised the room by paying the deposit of everyone present. They quickly crowdfunded enough money to begin construction, and in 2011, just before Christmas, its first members came online.

There are hundreds of small internet service providers owned by member co-operatives.

Co-Mo’s members aren’t the only people who can say they own their own internet utility. In cities and rural swaths across the country, there are hundreds of small internet service providers owned by member co-operatives, local municipalities, or tribal governments. Over the past two decades, these small internet service providers (ISPs) have been spreading and gaining notice. As success stories travel and inspire other communities to ask how they can do the same thing, they’re multiplying faster than ever.

These locally owned networks are poised to do what federal and state governments and the marketplace couldn’t. One, they can bring affordable access to fast internet to anyone, narrowing the digital divide that deepens individual and regional socioeconomic disparities.

Two, these small operators can protect open internet access from the handful of large ISPs that stand to pocket the profits from net neutrality rollbacks announced by the Trump administration. That’s according to Christopher Mitchell, who is the director of Community Broadband Projects, a project of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance. Mitchell, who has been tracking and advocating community-owned broadband networks for a decade, hopes that this will be the moment when people rebel against the administration’s attack on net neutrality and expand rural cooperative and municipal ISPs.

“The FCC is basically taking the regulations off of big companies, but local companies can still offer high-quality internet access at good prices,” Mitchell says.

Without net neutrality, broadband providers will be able to charge more for better access and faster speeds or be able to restrict traffic to preferred business partners over competitors. More independent ISPs can offer consumers a wider variety of choices.

Internet connectivity is a crucial economic leveller, without which people fall behind in schools, health, and the job market.

“No one will have to offer prioritised content in the ways that we fear AT&T and Comcast will. So local investments can preserve access to the open internet,” Mitchell says.

Can internet co-ops offer an open alternative to big ISPs like Comcast?

But, for many, before the question of an open internet and net neutrality comes to the question of whether people can have access to and afford the internet at all.

Remote, sparsely populated areas like the rural Ozarks are often synonymous with the digital divide. Large carriers don’t have a financial incentive to enter those markets where getting high returns on their investment are unlikely if not impossible. According to the FCC, 39% of rural Americans – 23 million people – don’t have access to broadband speeds.

Before Co-Mo Connect got off the ground, Klindt says, only one out of five members had access to broadband. Many still crawled along on obsolete dial-up connections. By 2014, however, nearby Tipton (population 3,351) enjoyed connection speeds in the top 20% of the US and the fastest in Missouri. By 2016, Co-Mo’s entire service area was on the digital grid.

ILSR estimates that there are more than 300 telephone and electric co-ops that provide rural fibre-optic internet service. Since the late 1990s, these co-ops have been installing more cable and leveraging existing infrastructure to provide faster service to their communities. A few have even built networks from scratch, such as RS Fiber in Minnesota and Allband in Michigan.

Matthew Rantanen, the director of technology for the Southern California Tribal Chairmen’s Association, tells another story of access and adoption from reservation lands, where the FCC estimates that 68 percent of residents – 1.3 million people – lack access. Rantanen directed the initiative, which introduced wireless internet to 17 tribal reservation communities in San Diego County.

“Whatever is right for the local culture and the local government capacity is probably the best way forward.”

The initiative, Rantanen says, inspired Valerie Fast Horse, the IT director of the Coeur d’Alene tribe in Idaho, to build an entirely fibre tribal network. “Networking is in its very early stages, and I can’t wait to see some of this blossom,” Rantanen says. He estimates that just 30 of more than 300 tribal reservations in the US have broadband access.

Internet connectivity is a crucial economic leveller, he says, without which people fall behind in schools, health, and the job market. “Without that resource,” Rantanen says, “You’re a different class. You’re [on] a different level of participation in the US and the world.”

Though unequal access is primarily thought of as a rural problem, it affects urban centres, as well. ILSR estimates 90 cities are connected with high-quality municipal networks, while more than 200 are connected with more basic networks.

“Customers want reliable, fast, and inexpensive service. The market is not solving this problem,” says Deb Socia, the executive director of Next Century Cities, which works with 183 mayors across the country in hatching plans to fund locally based solutions in 19 states.

“The biggest dilemma for cities is that there has been an erosion of the capacity for communities to solve their own problems, and that has happened primarily at the state and federal level,” Socia says. Some networks, like the one in Ammon, Idaho, lease their networks to other providers. Others, like the one in Chattanooga, Tennessee, sell services like a conventional ISP.

“There are a lot of workable models,” says Mitchell, “and whatever is right for the local culture and the local government capacity is probably the best way forward.”

Cobbling together local solutions is the common challenge across all of these community projects, says Mitchell, whether it’s cracking the funding code, slashing through the governmental red tape, or cultivating enthusiastic leadership to convince communities that, in order to have their own internet service provider, it’s worth it to try something new.

Looking down the road, Mitchell believes that a strong network of small, competitive community-owned ISPs is possible. By syphoning revenue away from the monopoly ISPs, they could disrupt their ability to dominate their markets. And also, if net neutrality does indeed get rolled back, competition could make it less appealing for large ISPs to restrict content.

“I would say that if we had a flourishing of these local networks, it would still significantly hurt the ability of Comcast and AT&T to create tollbooths,” to prioritise content, Mitchell says. “It’s going to be fascinating to see what’s going to happen in coming years.”

• This article was originally published in Yes! Magazine.

Photo by Stephen D. Melkisethian

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When it comes to the internet, our connections are generally controlled by telecom companies. But a group of people in Detroit is trying to change that. Motherboard met with the members of the Equitable Internet Initiative (EII), a group that is building their own wireless networks from the ground up in order to provide affordable and high-speed internet to prevent the creation of a digital class system.

Killer video about Detroit’s Equitable Internet Initiative. Also check out the Mesh Network project in Sarantaporo, Greece.

This video was originally published in Vice, but make some time to read the related article posted in Motherboard. Here’s an extract:

Jason Koebler: The Federal Communications Commission will announce a full repeal of net neutrality protections Wednesday, according to the New York Times and several other media outlets. It is possible that a committee of telecom industry plutocrats who have from the outset made it their mission to rollback regulations on the industry will bow to public pressure before Wednesday, but let’s not count on it.

It is time to take action, and that doesn’t mean signing an online petition, upvoting a Reddit post, or calling your member of Congress.

Net neutrality as a principle of the federal government will soon be dead, but the protections are wildly popular among the American people and are integral to the internet as we know it. Rather than putting such a core tenet of the internet in the hands of politicians, whose whims and interests change with their donors, net neutrality must be protected by a populist revolution in the ownership of internet infrastructure and networks.

In short, we must end our reliance on big telecom monopolies and build decentralized, affordable, locally owned internet infrastructure. The great news is this is currently possible in most parts of the United States.

Read the rest of the article in Motherboard.

The post To Save Net Neutrality, We Must Build Our Own Internet appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Matt Petronzio: Net neutrality is in jeopardy. It’s time for you to take action.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC), which is the U.S. government’s media regulator, is planning to completely scrap Obama-era rules protecting the idea that the internet should be an even playing field. Without these rules, the door is open for internet service providers like Verizon, AT&T, and Comcast to potentially favor or discriminate against certain content and services, accept money for preferential treatment, or even charge users more for better access.

Put simply: online free speech, innovation, and creativity are at stake.

The FCC and its chairman, Ajit Pai , are cleverly burying the news this week while much of the country is focused on the Thanksgiving holiday. Voting on the rules is expected to take place as early as Dec. 14.

But you can join the fight immediately in one major way: call your representatives.

Your lawmakers in Congress have the power to stop the FCC’s elimination of net neutrality rules, and as we’ve seen time and time again, calling your reps actually works.

Here are a few tools that will help you contact your members of Congress, demand a free and fair internet, and make your voice heard.

Be sure to also educate yourself on the topic of net neutrality, and keep your eyes peeled for protests across the country, online and off.

1. Battle for the Net

#NetNeutrality is NOT DEAD YET. Congress has stopped FCC votes before. Do NOT give up!

1) RETWEET this to help spread the word that we can still stop this.

2) CALL your lawmakers: https://t.co/S8d0OxZQe0

3) PROTEST at Verizon stores on Dec 7: https://t.co/OvdNJe0Idh pic.twitter.com/oPXgyGRsam

— Fight for the Future (@fightfortheftr) November 21, 2017

Battle for the Net is a joint initiative from three organizations fighting to protect net neutrality: Fight for the Future, Demand Progress, and the Free Press Action Fund. This central hub gives you a great overview of the issue and what the FCC is trying to do.

The website has a tool, front and center, where you can enter your phone number and you’ll be connected to your representative. You’ll also get a suggested script of what to say.

Find more info here.

2. 5 Calls

https://twitter.com/make5calls/status/932956258646315008

5 Calls doesn’t just make it easy to call Congress — it gives you a direct line to Pai’s office at the FCC, too. The site’s net neutrality page includes short instructions and scripts for you to read from, so you can speak with confidence.

Check it out here.

3. Free Press Action Fund

Call your members of Congress. Tell them to oppose the FCC’s plan to end #NetNeutrality. Our call tool makes it easy: https://t.co/reb5iyjIAk

— Free Press Action (@freepressaction) November 21, 2017

The Free Press Action Fund finds the right numbers for you to call just by your ZIP code. You can take action at the Free Press website and also on the Save the Internet site.

4. Electronic Frontier Foundation

The FCC’s new plan will create a future where only the largest Internet & cable, & telephone companies will survive while every start-up, small business, & new innovators are crowded out, & the voice of nonprofits and ordinary individuals are suppressed. https://t.co/DTaMdWmKDQ

— EFF (@EFF) November 21, 2017

Not into phone calls? No problem. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, which defends “your civil liberties in a digital world,” has a tool that lets you customize an email message to your representatives.

Find it here.

5. CREDO Action

CREDO statement on the FCC order dismantling #NetNeutrality: "This decision is bad for our economy, our free speech and our democracy." https://t.co/zZawMW8EXF pic.twitter.com/TaQcdHe4U4

— CREDO Mobile (@CREDOMobile) November 21, 2017

Progressive change organization CREDO Action has a clearly outlined, step-by-step guide for calling your reps about net neutrality.

Click here to use the tool.

6. ACLU

The FCC introduced a plan to completely repeal #NetNeutrality. Call Congress NOW before it's too late. https://t.co/edAOIrEi2R
#SaveNetNeutrality

— ACLU (@ACLU) November 21, 2017

The ACLU is known for taking action on a variety of social issues, and it’s partnering with Fight for the Future and the Harry Potter Alliance to fight for net neutrality.

Find the organization’s call tool and a helpful script here.

BONUS: Consider donating to impactful organizations

Beyond calling Congress, various grassroots efforts are leading the charge to make sure the government hears your voice on net neutrality.

Here are a few organizations that you can support:

• Fight for the Future
• Demand Progress
• Free Press
• Electronic Frontier Foundation
• Access Now
• Public Knowledge

WATCH: What is net neutrality?

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What is net neutrality?

Net neutrality is the principle that Internet providers like Comcast & Verizon should not control what we see and do online. In 2015, startups, Internet freedom groups, and 3.7 million commenters won strong net neutrality rules from the US Federal Communication Commission (FCC). The rules prohibit from blocking, throttling, and paid prioritization—”fast lanes” for sites that pay, and slow lanes for everyone else.

We are Team Internet. We support net neutrality, freedom of speech.

Nearly everyone who understands and depends on the Internet supports net neutrality, whether they’re startup founders, activists, gamers, politicians, investors, comedians, YouTube stars, or typical Internet users who just want their Internet to work as advertised—regardless of their political party. But don’t take our word for it. Ask around, or watch some of these videos.

They are Team Cable. They want to end net neutrality, to control & tax the Internet.

Cable companies are famous for high prices and poor service. Several rank as the most hated companies in America. Now, they’re lobbying the FCC and Congress to end net neutrality. Why? It’s simple: if they win the power to slow sites down, they can bully any site into paying millions to escape the “slow lane.” This would amount to a tax on every sector of the American economy. Every site would cost more, since they’d all have to pay big cable. Worse, it would extinguish the startups and independent voices who can’t afford to pay. If we lose net neutrality, the Internet will never be the same.

Send a letter to defend net neutrality.

Photo by DavidDPD

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The future of the internet is in peril, thanks to surveillance, net neutrality and other assaults. But there are communities that are building their own.

Like many Americans, I don’t have a choice about my internet service provider. I live in a subsidized housing development where there’s only one option, and it happens to be, by some accounts, the most hated company in the United States.

Like its monstrous peers, my provider is celebrating that Congress has recently permitted it to spy on me. Although it pretends to support the overwhelming majority of the country’s population who support net neutrality, it has been trying to bury the principle of an open internet for years and, under Trump’s Federal Communications Commission, is making good progress.

I can already feel my browsing habits shift. I’m reigning in curiosities a bit more, a bit more anxious about who might be watching. I’ve taken to using a VPN, like people have to do to access the open internet from China. And the real effects go deeper than personal anxieties.

Although the fight for an open internet tends to have Silicon Valley tech bros at the forefront, it’s a racial justice issue; arbitrary powers for corporations tend not to help marginalized populations. It’s a rural justice issue, too.

The big service providers pushing the deregulation spree are the same companies that have so far refused to bring broadband to less-dense areas. They are holding under-served communities hostage by proposing a deal: roll back rights to private, open media, and we’ll give you cheaper internet. Trump’s Republican party is taking the bait.

This is not a deal we need to make. It shouldn’t be necessary to choose between universal access and basic rights. But this deal has been a long time coming, thanks to long campaigns to convince us there is no other way. It turns out, though, there is.

Up in the mountains west of me, a decade and a half ago, the commercial internet service providers weren’t bringing high-speed connectivity to residents, so a group of neighbors banded together and created their own internet cooperative. Big providers love making their jobs sound so complicated that nobody else could do it, but these people set up their own wireless network, and they still maintain it.

Of course, their service remains pretty rudimentary; the same can’t be said of Longmont, Colorado, a city 20 minutes from where I live in the opposite direction. There, the city-owned NextLight fiber network provides some of the fastest connectivity in the country for a reasonable price. In Longmont, all the surveillance and anti-neutrality stuff simply isn’t relevant.

“As a not-for-profit community-owned broadband provider, our loyalty is entirely to our customer-owners,” a spokesman recently told the local paper. “That will not change, regardless of what happens to the FCC regulations in question.”

Municipalities across the country, from Santa Monica to Chattanooga, have quietly created their own internet service providers – and for the most part residents love them, especially in comparison to the competition.

A major reason more towns haven’t followed suit is that the big telecoms companies have lobbied hard to discourage or outright ban community broadband, pressuring many states to enact legal barriers. It’s happening again in West Virginia. But the tide may be turning.

Consumer Reports has taken up a crusade against these restrictions. Colorado has one on the books, but jurisdictions can opt out by referendum. Following Longmont’s example, in the 2016 election, the citizens of 26 cities and countiesin the state opened the door to building internet service providers of their own.

Local government isn’t the only path for creating internet service accountable to its users. On the far western end of the state, an old energy cooperative called Delta Montrose Electric Association has created a new offering for its member-owners, Elevate Fiber. It delivers a remarkable 100 megabits per second – upload and download – to homes for $50 a month.

Electric co-ops once brought power to rural areas to people that investor-owned companies wouldn’t serve, and now they’re starting to do the same with broadband. The Obama-era FCC supported these efforts. Donald Trump has voiced support for rural broadband in general, but it remains to be seen whether that will mean subsidies for big corporations, whose existing customers despise them, or opportunities for communities to take control of the internet for themselves.

Whatever happens in Washington, we can start building an internet that respects our rights on the local level. What would be the best route for creating community broadband in your community?

In cities and towns, it’s probably through a municipal government, or even neighborhood mesh networks, which can swell across whole regions. Rural areas can piggyback on existing electric and telephone cooperatives, or start new co-ops from scratch.

The Institute for Local Self-Reliance is one of the best organizations tracking these options, and its Community Networks website is full of resources about who is doing what where, and why.

It turns out that many community-based internet providers actually oppose the form net neutrality has come to take. There are troubling reasons the idea is so vigorously supported by internet giants like Facebook and Google, who also have surveillance addictions of their own.

There is a genuine debate to be had. Entrapment by unpopular, unaccountable corporations doesn’t constitute one. Those of us who rely on regulations to protect us from our providers can’t afford to budge on letting those regulations go. But when our points of access are accountable to us, the debate about the future of the internet can get a lot more interesting.

Photo by Free Press Pics

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