The Future of Community Wireless Networks

Dwainsworld's thoughts on where community wireless networks are heading

It’s sad but true that the cause of community wireless networking is one that has a limited future in Australia. Technically speaking there is nothing stopping the success of community wireless networks as it’s a pretty standard formula to make data links work using WIFI technology.

Community Wireless networking in Australia is simply dieing through lack of interest. In the present day where everybody is doing well, and our every desire from food to internet access can be instantly gratified nobody wants to put effort toward making a complex network of computers without financial gain  - especially when it’s already been done by the internet.

Wireless groups all over the country rely on just a few enthusiasts to keep them running, and when for some reason or other just one of those key enthusiasts drops out, it’s a major blow to the community network. This has been the case with the Nameless Wireless Network – The infrastructure is still in place and still working quite happily – just with nobody using it.

It’s a shame that the community wireless networking model is unlikely to survive. Our reliance on instant gratification and thirst for cheap goods is what is feeding big business, and big business in turn satisfies our desires – if (most) people are hungry they eat fast food, if they want to go shopping they go to department stores, and supermarkets, if they fly they use a low cost carrier and if they want technical stuff they go to the big Telco’s or ISP’s.

 Big business in turn aims to kill all competition so that consumers have no choice but to shop with them, and then provide a very ordinary product at seemingly competitive prices. Supermarkets stock meat, fruit and vegetables that are up to months old before they hit the shelves and are usually imported and of inferior quality. Fast food outlets just sell high sugar high fat rubbish and return the profits to the good old USA. Low Cost airlines sell tickets at or below cost to ensure new airlines cannot enter the market, and resent their customers in the same way that ISP’s resent theirs.

The result of all this is that people think they are getting what they want, but without the benefit of competition they just don’t realise that they could be getting a whole lot more.

What does all this have to do with Wireless networking? Well……community wireless networking was intended to provide an alternative network to the internet – not one that replaces the internet, but one that is simply an alternative. One with similar but slightly different functionality, one that would break down at different times, but most importantly one that the people who use it could participate in, free from any constraints put in place by big business.

There is a common school of thought that the internet as it is today will not be the same in years to come. It just makes sense that large corporations would desire control over the internet, as it’s the last Bastian of free speech and publishing. If there is only one internet and it becomes controlled by an ever decreasing ownership base then clearly things on the internet will be changing in the future. The whole wireless networking idea had it been a success might have challenged this in just a minor way.

There is a future for community wireless networks, but that future is not in the cities – it’s in rural areas. Recently I visited Mudgee in New South Wales, where I saw what was obviously a VERY expensive commercial microwave link between two offices of a car dealership. One of the offices had a Satellite internet connection. The town can’t get broadband !

If Mudgee had a community wireless network – everybody in the town and surrounding areas would have the benefit of a fast network, and perhaps even access to fast internet if a gateway with enough bandwidth could be organised.  For the people of Mudgee it would be quite an improvement to their lives. A successful wireless network in almost any town would pretty much kill it’s own self, because Telstra or the like would very quickly move to roll out ADSL so as not to be out done by a community organisation. Even in that case the Wireless network would have still been a success if it forced ADSL to come to town.

The moral of this story is that people who live in cities don’t need community wireless networks because their every need is catered to by the ISP’s, but in rural areas where broadband cant be accessed, then wireless networks still have a place.