Our next talk is going to be by Sumi, and it's called Internet Access and Voice Over IP as Open Commons Infrastructure. Sumi, yours.

Thanks. I'm talking to you about the cryptic subject of Internet access and VoIP as Open Commons Infrastructure, which means my personal absolute incomplete overview of what is out there, and my personal wish list of what I would like to be there.

So, first of all, I'm going to try to improvise some kind of definitions because I haven't found usable ones anywhere. I'll give you some examples of what is out there. My view on what works, in which aspect, and what doesn't.

And my personal wish list here, it's called Perspectives. I haven't found any suitable definition of open infrastructure.

In analogy to free software, I would say that you should be able to use the infrastructure for any purpose. You should be allowed to understand how it works, what it's comprised of, etc. You should have the freedom to extend it, and the freedom to improve and modify it.

Which is kind of more difficult for infrastructure than for software, because you can easily destroy the workings for others while you improve it for yourself.

So there would probably need to be some restriction on that. An example would be the Pico Peering Agreement, which is used in Python context and other mesh networks. This focuses very much on the traffic and the routing information, and doesn't really cover anything above that scope.

For commons infrastructure, I don't know how many of you are familiar with the concept of commons economy?

Let me see a few hands. None. One. So, then I'll take a bit bigger turn here. So, commons originates from the commonly used land in a community that belonged to everybody, and everybody was free to use it.

And in commons economy, it's trying to recreate new commons. So, without barriers to access, and not in private property of any entity.

With different means, like companies owned by the employers, by the customers. Like constructions, where you have formally private entities owning things in order to fit into the capitalist system.

And then you try to take the control out of these entities and into the hands of the end users again. So, that would be my short definition of commons infrastructure would be that resources should be accessible to all members.

And that the owners should be identical to the users and or employees, admins that use and run the infrastructure. The prime example is, in this context, would be Freifunk, respectively, the Austrian version of Funkfeuer for open infrastructure.

I guess most of you are familiar with it around here. Do I need to explain Freifunk to anybody? Fine. So, what I found notable about it, it's that it has never grown much around Germany and Austria.

And that though it does provide all kinds of services on the network, most users actually use it for internet access and not much more.

Guifi, if I pronounce it correctly, is like of my most beloved, most favorite example. Let me add on that point that above Freifunk I don't have very much experience with these communities at all.

So, if there's somebody here from one of these communities and I'm talking complete bullshit, please feel free to correct me. This is kind of a mixture between the open infrastructure and commons infrastructure. So, you can build your own stuff, add it to the network, offer whatever you want.

But you can also pay a company in order to set that up for you. It's quite large, around 40k active nodes, around 50k kilometers, no, megameters, 50,000 kilometers of Wi-Fi links, some diesel fiber links.

Also here, mostly internet access and largely limited to Spain, Catalunya.

What I've included here, though I know basically nothing about it above some of the members, is FFDN. That would be an example of kind of common infrastructure.

It's a federation of non-profit ISPs. Mostly, never has grown out much, never has grown much out of the borders of France. But yeah, this is kind of representing the interest and also helping with the infrastructure of like community, small community ISPs.

What I like very much, though I know even less about it, is telecommunicationes indigenas comunidades.

Who offer GSN networks in rural Mexico to mostly indigenous communities. At the moment, as far as I found out, they probably have 16 communities with around 3,000 users.

And the nice thing about it is they are able to offer their service for less than 2 euros a month, which is really important in these communities because the income usually is even below 200 euros a month. What we are doing is telecommons, also kind of a commons infrastructure,

for VoIP service to mostly kind of eco villages and housing associations and this kind of communitarian living thingies.

Also some commons economy organizations, jointly owned by users and employees.

And a special feature is solidarity-based economy means everybody pays what they deem adequate, doable, what they feel it should be worth paying for them and what they can afford.

Everybody gets the service they need independent of their payments. So, my vision is that open infrastructure has been quite successful. Its limit is, it seems to me that projects tend to not grow out of one region or one language.

Which also makes some sense intuitively. And for pure open infrastructure, you mostly have kind of a nerdy prosumer base,

like people who also actively develop the network, administer it, and kind of their friends and family as a consumer base who get their support by these nerdy admins.

And that judging mostly from Freifunk experience, there's a workshop about that right now over there. My, at least from development of the Leipzig community, but I think it works in general,

is that the success of these networks is largely dependent on the alternatives of access. Like if some ISP comes along and provides high bandwidth links for low cost,

then half the user base will be gone. On the other hand, if you have a rural community where people definitely need more access than they can easily get, there will be a chance to grow a community.

So, for commons infrastructure, it's a bit different because you usually have smaller projects. They usually tend not to go, not to get that big as open infrastructure. But you have quite a stable development. I've never, well not never, but I don't hear much of commons infrastructure projects

that tend to just vanish or shrink tenfold in size. However, they're also usually regularly and socially quite limited.

And what I'm asking myself is if there wouldn't be a way to combine these two in a sensible manner. So, from a user perspective, I would like to have the availability and reliability of a managed infrastructure.

And also, I wouldn't want to have to be really tech-savvy in order to be able to join the network to use the services.

From a political perspective, these two are easily fulfilable by any commercial provider. From a political perspective, I would like to have openness in the organisation.

Means that anybody can easily join and transparency on how it works, how it's financed, what is needed.

And to have it be extensible so that what works in one region can easily be deployed in another region that new people can come in and can take part. And the same from a technical perspective, that the infrastructure is transparent,

of course it's built from open source components, that anybody can understand it, can add to it, etc. So, my personal wish list would be to have alternative ISP and VoIP services available,

let's say nationwide for the moment, I would love worldwide, with professional management and support. And where users can choose their degree of involvement. This is, how much time do we have left?

I have one idea in which direction it might go. I don't know if you are familiar with the Mitzhauser Zundikat, maybe some of you.

Who is familiar with Mitzhauser Zundikat 1, 2? Or with DFN, the provider of the German universities? Well, no. So my idea would be to have kind of small independent organizations who can be flexible,

do what they want, be regionally present, and then to have on the top layer, somebody who can provide the high infrastructure with higher costs, the juridical background, etc.

And also to provide some kind of a template on how to go forward, if you want to found your own ISP for your five friends.

And to have some kind of dependency between the two layers, so that neither the center body nor some satellite can just wander off and do crazy stuff on surveillance,

alt-right, don't know what. This would be kind of my wake idea where I think this might be fulfilled. I very much hope that you have either other ideas on how it could be done as well,

or ideas on how to work that out in detail. And there I would invite you to join our workshop, which will be at the Dome right now when this one finishes, or also just to meet up right after the talk, maybe here in the direction of the bar,

so we can share first ideas. I don't know if you still have time for some open questions. Okay, thank you Sumi for this talk. We have a couple of minutes left for questions and answers.

Do we have something from the internet? Internet is pretty mute. Anybody here in the audience interested in some more details or a question?

There is one. I got to go there. How does one get started doing something like this on his own region? Can you repeat it? How does somebody do that on his own? How do you get started doing that? Is it right?

You don't get started on your own. You need at least, but there is, I didn't count them. There's dozens to hundreds really like community ISPs and lots more other small ones that

I guess would be definitely interested in such a structure. So if you think of something useful with three people and put the concept out there, I think chances are not so bad that it will pick up speed.

Okay, thanks. Another question? Okay, I want to thank our talk, our speaker here, Sumi, with a small present from the OIO stage. Here we go. Something to drink and something sweet.

Thanks. Thanks again.