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.
