Community networks are networks collectively owned and managed by the community for non-profit and community purposes. They are constituted by collectives, indigenous communities or non-profit civil society organizations that exercise their right to communicate, under the principles of democratic participation of their members, equity, gender equality, diversity and plurality.
The information on the network design and operation is open and accessible, allowing and favoring the extension of the network by the users. Community networks promote local services and content, promote net neutrality and free interconnection and transit agreements with networks offering reciprocity.
– Cumbre Latinoamericana de Redes Comunitarias, Argentina 2018
Open network: Community Networks and Informatics
Custodian: CAKE
Exchange firms: non
Communication
Community Outreach
"Community networks represent a sustainable, effective and efficient approach to connectivity that directly involves the very people who face a connectivity gap. Our experiences show that they are naturally complementary to existing networks. However, their development faces a myriad of challenges: lack of affordable access to backbone infrastructure, business and/or service licensing requirements, expensive regulatory fees and taxes, poor access to spectrum, and limited funding – including difficulty in obtaining universal service funding. It is important that we approach these challenges holistically. Therefore, we urge policymakers and regulators to consider the benefits of community networks, and to reduce or eliminate barriers to allow them to develop" - https://www.ntia.doc.gov/files/ntia/publications/isoc-06072021.pdf
Some Community Networking and Informatics Groups and Activities:
Planning
Can Sensorica and collaborating open value networks, communities and ventures contribute new capacity for establishing, growing and sustaining community networking and informatics?
Proposed starting points:
Mapping of groups and initiatives
Meeting and sharing stories across groups, initiatives, regions, disciplines, sectors.
Identifying, linking, assembling, valuable information and other resources and services supporting community networking and informatics efforts.
Open source hardware and software projects and ventures that address needs of community networks.
Collaboration among complementary networks and perspectives - Community Networking and Informatics, Open Source Hardware and Software, peer-to-peer and decentralized communities, services, networks and technologies...
If you are not a Sensorica affiliate you can join here.
Resources
Governance
VENTURES under this COMMUNITY follow the OPEN VALUE NETWORK model's governance.
VENTURES are COLLABORATIVE, TRANSPARENT (anyone has access to the information that they produce) and OPEN (anyone can participate). They only produce things based on OPEN SOURCE technology. Ventures have a CUSTODIAN that represents them legally and acts as a trust for their tangible assets. Ventures can have multiple EXCHANGE FIRMS, which are commercial entities that move products and services developed by Ventures on the MARKET.
EXCHANGE FIRMS oblige themselves by contract with the CUSTODIAN to share PROFIT with all contributors to Ventures, from which they commercialize PRODUCTS.
Agreements
CUSTODIAN Agreement [provide link]
EXCHANGE FIRM Agreement [provide link]
Venture Governance Template [provide link]
See the Governance page for network-level and venture-level governance and governance templates documents.
Projects and Ventures
venture name
venture name