To achieve free, ubiquitous, wireless internet on a budget, we rely on technology. These are some of the enabling technologies around:
Meraki
Meraki routers
Meraki is a hardware manufacturer of small, low cost wireless network routers, based in San Francisco, backed by Google amongst others. They also use the MIT Roofnet developed meshing protocol to let gateway and repeater devices connect to each other, forming a mesh network of interconnected devices. Mesh networking is a way to route data, voice and instructions between nodes. Mesh networks are self-healing: the network can still operate even when a node breaks down or a connection goes bad. As a result, a very reliable (wireless) network is formed.
With near zero configuration, people can easily share their connection, or by hosting a device at their location, help grow the network coverage. Meraki offers a two models: an Indoors edition for US$49149 and Outdoors for US$99199. Both allow for user account creation, paid connections, no text adds, and no splash page, all through the Meraki dashboard.
We currently use Meraki because it enables us to swiftly build out our mesh network. It is mature and stable. In the (near term) future though we may switch to other hardware and software providers, as Meraki recently changed their pricing structure and terms and conditions.
Free The Net – San Francisco
After a bit over a year of operations, over 100.000 people have used Free the Net in San Francisco to connect to the Internet. With the help of volunteers, Meraki is building a network with thousands of indoor and outdoor repeaters! Each of these little boxes spreads the network a little further, bringing free Internet access to you and your neighbors. Meraki provides some of the Internet connections, while most is being supplied by the volunteers sharing their Internet connection.
FON
FON is one of the largest WiFi communities in the world. With 400.000 hotspots, and 1.000.000 registered members (as of September 2008), FON is a community of people making WiFi universal and free. FON’s vision is WiFi everywhere made possible by the members of the FON community, called Foneros. Foneros share some of their home Internet connection and get free access to the community’s FON Spots worldwide! Non FON members can access Foneros on a pay-as-you-go basis, after a 15 minute free trial.
FON managed to cooperate with some big telco’s round the world like British Telecom in the UK, who switched all their public hotspots to support FON.
FON has a business model that makes sense, but only allows free access to people who share their own Internet access at home, in a “pay it forward” sense. Sometimes people can’t afford the fee for Internet access to begin with, and as such, FON’s business model further enlarges the digital divide between the have (a Fonero) and have-nots, which we as Free Australia Wireless try to bridge. FON hardware is about the same in price as Meraki’s, but currenlty does not support mesh networking. FON is not available on the Australian market (yet).
Open-Mesh
Open-Mesh is a fully open source alternative to Meraki. Since Meraki changed their terms and conditions (from a pretty open platform, to more closed), this became more popular. It uses the ROBIN meshing protocol. Currently Open-Mesh lacks Meraki’s maturity, but in time the platform can only get more robust and stable, and popular.
Open-Mesh is priced at US$49, with a discount for 20+ packaged orders at US$39 each.
Currently Open-Mesh does not offer Australian power plugs and does not have the required C-Tick for use within Australia.
Intel
Intel recently announced it’s Rural Connectivity Platform (RCP), a specialized WiFi platform that can send data from a city to outlying rural areas tens of miles away, connecting sparsely populated villages to the Internet. The point-to-point technology requires two nodes, which could provide “full back-end infrastructure” for less than US$1,000.
One node is usually installed at the edge of an urban area, wired to a local-area network cable. Using a directional antenna, the device shoots data to a receiving antenna as far as 60 miles away. Once a node is installed in a village, the connection can be dispersed using standard cables and wireless routers. This technology could bring faster wireless internet connections into Australian rural communities, combined with a local deployment of a couple of dozen cheap WiFi access points.
Others
There are plenty of other (software) alternatives like Joiku hotspots, Whisher, Tomizone, or plain old DIY OpenWRT/DD-WRT on basic Linksys supported devices.
People
In the end it are individuals who are the biggest enablers. Passionate people who promote the cause and the use of particular hardware and software. A grassroots movement without interference of Big Corporate. Regular folk helping out other people set up and maintain their network, sharing their knowledge and experience, free of charge, in their own time.