Attended Co-op Congress in Manchester this weekend. Finally realised just how large the Co-operative movement is - it represents some 700+ million people worldwide. Shame then the brand perception is frequently so low. There were reports of co-ops having difficulties being recognised as true businesses, but the Co-op Group turned over £8 billion last year!
Very interesting talks about broadband (of course!) and the co-op involvement in the future. Interesting proposal to see the break up of BT in a novel way and to transform it into a co-op. That thought made my day!! However, the reality is that if community co-op networks continue to spring up across the planet, then the telcos really do have something to worry about. For historic evidence of the power of this type of evolution, check out the phone co-ops in the US and their power in the modern telco world of baby bells etc.
Meanwhile, possible networks to go into Greece, another one in Spain to support, the Royal Show stand to plan, and the next Digital Dales event which looks to be running instead of ABC Live, which has been moved to Scottish ABC.
Psand.net are hopefully coming to the RS with their solar wi-fi trike which will be hugely exciting, and blow the socks off the boring corporate/public sector presence!
VoIP as ever in the press as mentions of the value of this particular technology reach the financial market - £32bn by 2009. The true value is of course not monetary, but as yet no-one has worked out a way of assessing social benefits that cuts the mustard with the investors, Govt etc.
Two new DD networks in the process of going in in the Dales, so will report on those shortly. Nice to be able to gazump BT on their RFS dates. It seems that many others feel this way, and it does seem that it is beginning to concern BT that they (are going to) turn up to enable an exchange only to find a CAN present in the area who then strengthen their network with DSL/SDSL lines and keep the customer base. If only their product was as good as ours!!!
Big CAN meeting shortly with workshops to develop the services, content and applications between us all - watch this space for notes from there. After the slight fiasco of the last CBN meeting where someone accidentally invited BT as a speaker, this will be invite only!
If anyone is running a network, even if flying under the radar or very small, get in touch, and let's see what 'co-operation' can do for us all.
All got a bit hectic out in Spain, so the blogging was abandoned due to meeting lots more people who want networks too! However, I can report back that RucaNet is up and running with 5 nodes, across the lake, and there are plans to install at least one more network down the road near Estepona. All good stuff - Ole. Photos will go up in the projects area of the site very shortly.
Ok, here we are in Spain installing the Los Romanes network, and would you adamneve it, it´s colder here than UK! I am sitting here in a big fur coat, in a welding workshop. Today has been a reminder of how jobs are done in Spain with everyone nipping off to lunch just as you want to install the antenna, the ever-present power cuts just because 2 drops of rain have fallen, etc.
But, it´s slowly coming together and we haven´t been here a day yet. We´re near Malaga in the mountains, overlooking Lake Viñuela - great views and staying right above the bar has its benefits! The first 5 MeshBoxes are all registered and working fine, and the first antenna is up and working. One of the benefits of being in a welding workshop is that when you need brackets to fix the MeshBox to the wall, they miraculously appear in a couple of minutes.
There´s a 2 year waiting list for a phone line here from Telefonica so it looks like RucaNet should take off fairly fast, especially now VoIP works on the MeshBoxes. And ADSL, were it available here, starts at 80euros a month for a 50:1 contention which is pretty steep. Seem to recall that one of the largest shareholders or partners or something in Telefonica is BT - say no more!
The RucaNet website has been built this morning with the aid of many cups of tea, and now we just need to config the Aramiska ARC boxes to do the right thang with email and site hosting.
We brought everything required to set up a core mesh and connect 20 people as baggage and we seem to have a slightly unexpected version of ethernet cable as one of the moggies took up residence in a suitcase next to the RJ45 plugs!!!
Off next to survey round and through the olive trees which litter the place.
