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Comment by zymhan | Hacker News Reader

I'm not sure I understand how they did this. Did the residents' money go to building the local network for the village? Who provides the backbone? I just wonder how applicable this might be to small towns in the U.S.

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The article explains it- they formed a company, sold shares to residents, built the network, and then leased the network to an ISP. They then buy their service from the ISP.

I am very interested in similar projects, like B4RN in the UK- I am working to form a similar community initiative in Dade County, MO, USA. (DadeCountyFiber.org). My current plan is to operate the ISP locally as a nonprofit, rather than leasing it to the ISP as in the article (More like the B4RN project).

You may also find interesting this collection of "community" wireless entworks that we set up around Scotland: http://www.tegola.org.uk/networks.html

Thanks, i have bookmarked many of these types of community networks over the years. Always looking for more, the more ideas, the better!

Wow.. Some people just think about it. Amazing to see people go through with it.

Well, as far as I understand, some of the residents essentially formed a company (BBNG) which then built a fiber optics connection to the nearest TNG access point. TNG is a regional provider, serving in particular the town of Kiel (capitital of the state of Schleswig-Holstein) and is also (one of) the ISP for the corresponding state government. TNG in turn provides the actual service to the subscribers, and pays a leasing fee to BBNG. BBNG uses that revenue to reimburse the investors.

As for the peerings of TNG: http://www.cidr-report.org/cgi-bin/as-report?as=AS13101

TNG serves all of Schleswig-Holstein now? I thought this was a Kiel-only thing?

What I don't understand is how you figure out where the closest fibre access point is. I'm trying to get my head around how to carry out a project similar to this / B4RN and the first step seems to be to check if there's a fibre access point reasonably close by.

Find a local line-man and ask! Wherever you see one of those trucks working on overhead or underground lines there is a ton of knowledge about local infrastructure present.

Good spots to scout for: railroad stations, microwave towers, datacenters (unlikely, but still), highways.

You ask your telecoms drawing office who should have plans for all their plant.

You could try pinging @malcolmcorbett as he has been involved in community broadband

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