[wsfii-discuss] Economic Sustainability of Community Wireless

Fri Mar 30 16:45:05 UTC 2007

Lindsey,

One related issue may be a misconception by some that WSFII is
anti-business. Several have commented on this to me personally. It may
be that many of us are anti-corporate status quo but that does not mean
we are anti-business or anti-corprorate. Most of us here (it seems) do
want to find a viable way to do what we are doing as it relates to
wireless and so that means business/social enterprise development. Some
of us are even open to in the right conditions working with corporations
to get our work more widely known and to provide funding to sustain our
work.

It was my uderstanding that a focus point/goal for the Air Jaldi Summit
was to investigate sustainable business models for wireless networks.
However it is not clear to me what was actually gained on a practical
level and what if there was any exploration in terms of how to build
economically sustainable wireless networks particularly in emerging
markets. 

Apparently very few people attended Laura Drewett's Workshop "Economics
of Small Wireless Networks
http://summit.airjaldi.com/home/program/workshops/economics-for-small-se
rvice-operators/" (also some great resources here
http://resources.airjaldi.com/?page_id=23)at AJS.

Possibly there is a bit too much focusing on the engineering and
technical solutions and not enough on making the business model work.
This complements an effective strategy of promotion. Furthermore we need
a "complete ecosystem approach" that combines the best of breed
technologies and approaches to develop networks that can be scaled and
replicated moving the whole network forward in terms of as you say
"hitting the mark". 

The three main considerations I see are: 
1. Economic sustainability - Enable weaning off of grants and towards
incuation of local ICT related ventures esp in emerging markets
2. Social infrastructure -  Social/technological/economic infrastucture
integrated is necessary to ensure network sustainability.
3. Technology innovations - with good integrated with the economic and
social innovations in the network (1 & 2)

I would like to see the Economic Sustainability of Community Wireless as
a major theme at the WSFII Africa 2007 Summit. I will begin work to
incorporate the issue  of economic sustainability and (complementary to
this marketing) into our planning for the Summit.

Possibly we could use the materials in your email as a starting point
for planning a session on the effective promotion of community wireless
networks.

A capstone session could include people getting together in a workgroup
(along the lines of what I had proposed for AJS
http://summit.airjaldi.com/wiki/index.php/Integrated.Development.Approac
h) and looking at the best practices in wireless network with an eye for
integration. We can then consider as part of the workshop not just a
peicemeal approach but consider how we can effectively integrate all the
pieces to great compelling projects that speak for themselves. This
would include consideration of how to build business models to maximize
the replication of these wsfii projects. 

Jeff

This post, combined with the previous one about creating video footage
about wsfii type projects, are of great interest to me personally as
they have cropped up in UK conversations for several years, and
particularly recently. 

It has always seemed to be one area where community wi-fi/broadband
networks haven't always hit the mark - whether with governments,
funders, local authorities, establishing credibility with consumers etc.
Mainly, it has seemed, cos we are so busy trying to get the solutions to
work, that there is little time for self-promotion. 

In each community, and globally, we have a mix of skills. Techies,
support, coders, promoters, grant seekers etc. 

I would like to propose, in light of the posts about case studies and
video footage, that we get together those who are very interested in the
marketing and promotion side of community broadband networks, and talk
amongst ourselves. Just from last week's talks with Freifunk and
Funkfeuer for some EU research for the rural broadband conference in
Brussels in May, we have found that we have contacts between us covering
most of the EU, and then some in US, Asia and Australia. Errr... in
fact, global contacts!! After all, this community broadband world is not
very big, yet. ;o) 

If everyone could decide which event to go to this summer in EU (!),
perhaps we could have one track for those of us interested in promoting
community broadband activity, and tie it in with the amazing work coming
from the other side of the Atlantic through Sasha, Alison etc, and in
Asia, and start making a much bigger impact by working together. 

Or just start it all online through a separate list about promotional
activity to get the word out about the grassroots' efforts ongoing
across the world?

I'm happy to be amongst the UK/EU contacts more than happy to get
involved in that type of work, and push to get together TV/video
footage, and publicise the case studies etc created by us all wherever
we are. 

Let's JFDI?! 

ATB
Lindsey Annison
l.annisonatgmail.com
Co-founder, Access to Broadband Campaign 
http://www.ABCampaign.org
Founder member, Community Broadband Network
http://www.broadband-uk.coop 
Author: JFDI Community Broadband: Wennington
http://www.lulu.com/content/488550 