[wsfii-discuss] Economic Sustainability of Community Wireless

Fri Apr 27 13:46:30 UTC 2007

Hi Ian,
Very pertinent what you said below, maybe we should accept that some project
will have as only purpose to show a possibility, and it is people themselves
who must embrace  it or not according to their needs.

Fundamentally what I draw from your reaction is that a model is adopted only
if it suits a community needs, and as there are so different communities
with so different needs , because of the difference in environments and
mindset  in which they live, than an universal business model is utopia. (So
difficult to take the freifunk or the server host based, or the FON , or the
exotic model and transpose it at it is in a different context, I know that
nobody proposed it !!!!!!).

So we should look at model where all the same opportunities are given to
everybody and anyone according to his background, availability , willingness
could grab it or not.

Just a quick pique to a previous direction that the discussion took, I
noticed the way you used "economical value" for you "if the network fulfill
a need the community will keep it alive", shouldnt you say however "Social
value"???  Why do we always associate something that has a social value to
money?

>>>>
>:leaning to, such as in the phrase,
>"Demonstrate the economic viability of sustainable development, promoting a
variety of appropriate >sustainable technologies and approaches suitable to
local conditions and preferences." We believe >that some models should be
simply that, to demonstrate something, for the purpose of testing it and
>showing people(training) them. Then, you later close the doors and if local
peopl ewant that network, >they will build it, as they will know how (if the
project was done right).To get back to your mention of >FM, I might simply
redirect your reference to state what is most important is that the network
fulfil >ssome crucial need of the community, such as an FM radio is hungry
for information, or that farmers >need to know market info. If the network
then fulfils a real need, than the network will be kept alive by >the
community. It will then have economic value.Cheers!
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