We should definitely do this in america, God we need this!
The best solution would be allowing people to risk free run grid networks (which would be, I think, very low bandwidth) and have communities also supply separtae low bandwidth Internet connected wifi for free. We would then use a paid for service for anything for more than text or other low bandwidth uses. No one would download large mp3s, watch Netflix, etc. from the very low bandwidth community wifi, and the separate grid network would be local and likely not have anything to attract "Imperial interest" (sorry about the Star Wars metaphor :-)
Local grid networks could be part of support for local libraries, community centers, etc.
There was a surge in people doing wifi WAN style networks across whole cities, back when internet speeds were slow+expensive, and decent directional wifi antennas were available fairly inexpensively.
I think low-cost high-speed internet largely killed the need for it: perhaps Prism has given us a nudge to start again?