trail balloon... or rick's folly...

[Kent Miller]

What area are you servicing? You might be able to get help from the USDA
Rural Utillities Service Department. They do loans and grants to Broadband
service providers in Rural Areas. I just did web development work for this
depart on an Intranet.

Hope this helps,

Kent Miller

----- Original Message -----
From: "Tony Sheets" <tony at sheets.net>
To: "Network Administrator" <netadmin at sunflower.org>
Cc: <kclug at kclug.org>
Sent: Friday, October 19, 2001 9:20 AM
Subject: Re: trail balloon... or rick's folly...

> Rick,
>
> I'm extremely interested in what you are proposing.   Robert X. Cringely
> recently wrote an article that bears on this idea:
>
> http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20010823.html
>
> look for the mention of http://www.lariat.org/  which is essentially a
> Laramie, WY implementation of the idea that you have brought forth here.
>
> Not only could this provide cheaper bandwidth, and some real
> competition, but in some areas it could potentially help reduce the
> "digital divide"  (which is where the Fed dollars could come in.)
>
> Pleases keep me posted as to how this idea progresses, and contact me if
> you begin any "gorilla networking."
>
> Tony Sheets
>
> On Monday, August 27, 2001, at 10:15 AM, Network Administrator wrote:
>
> > Everybody,
> > My name is Rick Palmer-I'm a net admin at Sunflower Community Network
> > in KC. http://www.sunflower.org We're a non-profit ISP and have been
> > going since 1994.   We started out at KCPT and outgrew the facility. We
> > have no profit motive,  salaries are substandard and all that kinda
> > stuff. This isn't some commercial angle or scam.
> >
> > THE SETUP
> > Sunflower's only real problems stem from the fact that we can't get
> > good reliable service from the phone companies.  Its blatant
> > anti-competitive crap.  All the major providers of local dial tone use
> > the same procedural ways of not providing -customers that compete with
> > them- the same service they give themselves.  There are endless
> > examples but this last year MCI/Worldcom raised our costs for phone
> > lines by $3000 on a $6000 a month bill (now nearly $10,000 including
> > taxes) by applying Subscriber Line Charges out of the blue.  They
> > aren't required to do this it is totally optional.  On top of that we
> > don't even use the services that this charge is supposed to be used
> > for.  This is the modem tax that we all pooo poo'd.  It caused us to
> > raise our yearly membership from $79 a year to $99 a year.  We're not
> > happy cause we were working hard to lower the price.  Its been this
> > sorta thing from the beginning in 1994...and its put many a commercial
> > ISP outa business.  This is about the corporate giants consolidating
> > and monopolizing.  I'm prolly preaching the choir...I hope I am.
> >
> > THE FOLLY
> > With that in mind, I'd like to run this by you'all.    I read about
> > this sorta thing a couple years ago but the expense was prohibitive. I
> > have a gut feeling that this could be the future of community based
> > networking.    Real gorilla networking.    We'd like to use patchwork
> > of home built high speed connections to "wire" the city.  Over the last
> > couple years several things have happened that make it affordable...?
> > Mostly the ideas have been refined which brought equipment costs
> > down-and the wireless standard has evolved and become available at low
> > cost.  We know how to do point to point DSL using the phone companies
> > but building it ourselves...etc.
> >
> > The one thing piece that is missing is a way to deploy it.  It would
> > take a bunch of volunteer hobbyist types who would get high speed
> > access to their house  via point to point wireless, home built DSL
> > connections or other creative connections.   They would set up local
> > wireless nodes to give access to the neighborhood.  (802.11 standard)
> >
> > My notion is that Sunflower would find funding for it.  Maybe we could
> > charge a small $20 a year of something for an account?  I don't
> > know...  I would expect that we'd set up a committee of some kind to
> > sort out these issues.   I expect there might be government money in it
> > too.   But it is irrelevant without that small band of gorilla
> > networkers in the field really making it happen.
> >
> > Any thoughts?  Anyone care?  Sunflower will continue to slug it out
> > against the corporate giants but it would be nice to find a way to take
> > the fight to them..........
> >
> > rick palmer
> > network administrator
> > sunflower community network
> > kansas city's non-profit
> > network access project
> > since 1994
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
majordomo at kclug.org
> >
>
>
>
majordomo at kclug.org