[Udo]

At first, I thought this was encouraging. But then I checked out the 3 "providers" listed for my country (Germany). One is a club maintaining connectivity for a specific student housing project, one offers only dialup/ISDN, and finally only one offers actual ADSL connectivity. I'm sure it's the same in other countries.

While it's interesting as a concept, I don't really get the feeling there is much to see here. It's also not clear to me how these very few access providers would actually federate without real backbone connectivity.

[morphle]

We have a foundation that is setting up a federation of co-operatives of Neighborhood ISP's that will offer professional, secure and anonymous fiber to the home and farm internet at speeds of 1 Gbps, 10 Gbps up to 80 Gbps. We invite everyone who wants to participate or start their own ISP with our help. We currently have more then 1000 km of backbone on three continents for everyone to hook up their DIY ISP at cost price. We can also set up new backbones in other area's. We produce our own open source hardware switches and routers with fiber, copper ethernet and wifi. You can reach us at aart at knoware dot nl We will provide courses, tools and investment for anyone willing to attempt to built an ISP, provide privacy protection is your intent. I started the first public internet provider in my country, to indicate that have some experience.

[AlterSid]

In Belgium, we are in the process of setting up an associative ISP, the road is long, but we have already started "formallly" to investigate technical solutions for vdsl lines, radio/wifi links; procurement of server, uplink, datacenter.. We have just passed a milestone which was to set up the legal entity supporting our diy isp.

You are right to point out that there is still a lot of work to be done, but this is a step in the right direction imho.

The idea behind this federation at this point is more to advertise the status of the various projects, and connect people together to share expertise (legal and hands-on).

[Udo]

> but this is a step in the right direction imho.

It absolutely is, yes. What you're doing is admirable.

> The idea behind this federation at this point is more to advertise the status of the various projects

Ah, alright then. My first association was there'd by an effort to extricate yourself from the all-pervading surveillance, censoring, and traffic-shaping planned or already taking place. Of course, setting up an organization for knowledge sharing is also a worthy cause.

[AlterSid]

I sure hope this happens at the federation level too and becomes intrinsically tied to it. But what I am sure of, is that these aspects are some of the main drivers for people I had the pleasure to meet irl, and who are behind these initiatives.