It’s clear that the internet is an enabler of other human rights, like the freedom of expression … rights to electricity, rights to water, rights to shelter
— Roger Baig-Viñas, researcher and volunteer at Guifi.net
In the rural mountain communities outside of Barcelona, Spain, fiber optic lines run across the land— from east to west and north to south. These lines supply internet access to the region’s farmers and villagers. The access they provide is thanks to Guifi.net, a telecommunications network that is governed democratically by the members it serves.
Guifi.net began in late 2003 to solve a specific problem in the village of Gurb in Osona County: little to no internet access. While urban centers in Spain were already connected, most rural villages lacked access. In Gurb, the only place in town with the internet was the town hall. This was because, under Spanish law, internet service providers (ISPs) are required to provide service to every town. For-profit ISPs could fulfill the minimum legal requirement by providing internet to only the town hall in rural villages like Gurb. Facing constituents who were angry that their representatives had internet access while they did not, elected officials welcomed the Guifi.net solution with open arms.
Starting as a single connection across rooftop antennas, Guifi.net then expanded and installed more nodes that could send and receive WiFi signal among them, sharing connectivity throughout the network. Eventually, in 2009, the network added fiber optic lines. Now, it has established over 36,000 working nodes, connecting not only Gurb but many other villages to WiFi. The network creates a common pool of bandwidth to which neighbors can contribute and from which they can draw, and this continues to grow as more participants join. Members receive bills that separate how much of their payment goes to construction and operational costs and how much gets reinvested into the network.
Guifi.net is explicit in its anti-capitalist motives. Its model disrupts the traditional telecommunications economy by fostering a collaborative economy and a commons. It rejects exploitation of user communities and favors a sustainable, mutually beneficial network infrastructure. The project sees internet and telecommunications access as a human right and aims to provide connectivity for groups who are traditionally excluded.
The infrastructure and services provided by Guifi.net are funded by donations, loans, subsidies, and member payments. The project also brings in money through the Guifi.net Foundation, which was founded after Guifi.net received the National Telecommunications Award from the Catalan government in 2007.
Unlike many for-profit companies, speculative and extractive practices are explicitly forbidden by the organization. To protect the network against exploitation, Guifi.net is a direct democracy where governance occurs through participatory meetings. It has three groups of stakeholders: public interest, altruistic, and in-return. The public interest group comprises the administrative bodies; the altruistic group is made up of volunteers and donors who do not seek repayment; the in-return group seeks some benefit for themselves either by offering services for fees, or fees for services.
Guifi.net isn’t the only network of its kind. Similar telecommunications networks include the Freifunk network in Germany, or FunkFeuer in Austria, a citizen-led provider that taught Guifi.net how to use its technology. Beyond this, there are other communities in diverse locations, from Slovenia to rural villages in Mexico, who are actively developing their own wireless networks.
In today’s world, internet access is not simply desirable but is essential for exercising other important rights and for accessing a wide range of further resources. It supports freedom of expression, education, communication across boundaries, and connects people to the information they need to defend their rights around housing, land, energy, and so much else. The countless rural communities who, under capitalism, lack internet access because supplying it is not profitable for ISPs, do not need to wait any longer. Like Guifi.net, communities can take steps to understand how these networks work, reach out to community members and international partners, and build mesh networks of their own.
