AMC - Community Wireless Networks

Sascha from Urbana gave a very power-point-isk presentation about what they are doing with their open source net bsd based mesh wireless routing platform. He’s got the urbana community wireless network, and he’s launched a new community wifi reform website.

Then Antwuan Wallace talked about bct partners who work lobbying for funding / subsidies to bring internet access in to poor housing developments. They are setting up community media centers and using wifi to get internet in to buildings which aren’t being served by the big broadband companies. It was interesting, but they end up getting corporate handouts from Cisco and verizon. This traps them in to closed and proprietary systems.

CNT (Community Neighborhood Technology) is a Chicago based organization which has been trying to use the tech that sascha talked about. Similar to the BCT folks they have been putting out networks, but they’ve been trying to do it with more open tech. They don’t have as many people online, just about 100 houses. Paul Smith from CNT talked a lot about the logistics of getting it setup, talking to people in the building, getting them a computer, scheduling a visit for installing the wifi link.