Anyone tried Helium (HNT)? This seems to be basically a private LoRaWAN network where providing running a gateway mines you crypto-currency tokens. Proof of work is replaced by proof of connectivity, power usage by a miner is 5W, especially relevant in the context of #bitcoin debate
@kravietz my take on Helium: since 2015 we have the open #communitynetwork TheThingsNetwork where peers share their gateways and everyone has free access. >100 thousand people are sharing 1000s of gateways covering at least partially the main cities.
Then comes Helium. They build private networks where people have to pay for access. That's basically reverting back from a community approach to a market exchange model.
I don't buy that. You?
Precisely so. Although in the UK the uptake of public LoRaWAN gateways is... limited. In my town there's literally a few, with very limited range, run by hobbyists. But a decent LoRaWAN gateway *and* antenna *and* high location cost money.
@Wtebbens That's very nice, actually! I'd love to see something like that in the UK. Unfortunately here all mesh & community networks seem to have been ultimately killed by chilling effect of RIPA surveillance regulation. I don't think it would actually apply to community networks but there were rumours being spread - basically that it's enough to route someone else's ping to go to jail for 100 years. And people in UK are rather risk averse ;)
"community" broadband networks do exist in rural areas here but as small commercial businesses that resell a fibre link from British Telecom, Virgin or Cityfibre by sharing it over long range wifi, and they register with Ofcom etc just like any other ISP.
I suspect the wider British problem is we need a /community/ first (rather than adjacent households who barely tolerate one another, its far /worse/ in rural areas) before we could hope to build community networks!
ironically for all the claims of social decay, British suburban town areas do have a reasonable sense of community, but also far less need for mesh networks to access the Internet, there are now 3 companies willing to provide fixed broadband infrastructure to buildings in most areas and mobile LTE internet works well everywhere. (Hobby mesh networks for IOT/weather monitoring projects are still of interest to some...)
I think B4RN seem to have done a decent job of fibre-based community internet, what do you make of it?
@neil @vfrmedia @kravietz I recall B4RN from presentations by the guifi.net team, both community broadband networks. Crucial in my opinion to recover the foundational infrastructure of the net.
It makes sense from an economics PoV to work as a community, but also from the view of fundamental human freedoms, of expression and communication.
@jdaviescoates @kravietz @cloudron nice. Or the Things Stack.
Although that (deploying the lorawan network server) is just a part of running a community server. Also need to have a serious plan to maintain it, mobilise the community to point their gateways to that LNS, generate basic revenue to pay for the team, integrate with application servers.
@kravietz True that, but that is a different discussion. Community networks like guifi.net can have commercial operators on top of it.
In Catalonia we're running a little cooperative business to help municipalities to deploy, maintain and train with #LoRaWAN infra. All investment helps grow the community network - http://xoic.coop