[jdeibele]

Back in the dark ages, there were hobbyists who would order alarm circuits ($6/month) and pay for the DSL equipment on each side. This let them connect to the internet back as it was in 1992 or so.

The problem with this was that you had to know somebody who would be willing to be the other side of your connection. That obviously didn't scale very well.

Portland tried having a [free WiFi](https://www.oregonlive.com/breakingnews/2008/06/portlands_wi...) setup with antennas mounted on streetlights. The goal was to have 95% of the city covered but most people needed a signal booster to reach the antennas and very few people did that. My guess is that even if they did that the bandwidth would have been really slow.

There have been a couple of attempts to do a mesh network in Portland with hobbyists but it's really hard. People have moved from computers to phones, tablets, and dedicated devices like Rokus or smart TVs.

A tech support manager I worked with said "these people don't want to be taught how to catch a fish. They want us to catch the fish, cook it, and serve it with a smile."

Some people are OK with amateur performance - there's no internet because Betty went away for the weekend and isn't there to re-boot the router - but most people aren't.

[heavyset_go]

The free WiFi in NYC seemed to work pretty well, and there is NYC Mesh[1].

[1] https://www.nycmesh.net/