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[Dale Beams]

Rick,

Are you proposing using our current connections (ie. SW DSL - RR) for this
venture, or using a sunflower supplied connection at a reduced cost to
anyone willing to set up a 802.11 ?  If your proposing using your bandwidth
facilities, I am interested.

MLUG is having a discussion along the same lines.  Originally, I think the
idea was to set up "community" internets.  For example, my home town in
Osborne, KS (pop. 3000 ? - if were lucky) would make a great place for
community internet.  City Hall, County Courthouse, Bank, and Local Grocery
could all be set up to do so.  Bank by local internet, merchants, etc.  Even
home delivery of groceries would be possible provided one could re-coupe the
shopping and gas charges.  All of this without bieng connected to the global
internet.

Find a way to connect to Downs (15 miles) using rural homes as connecting
points and then it the communinty internet becomes a "county internet".

I have looked at the feasability of using packet radio ( requires a
licence ) to send information back and forth to my parents.

Set up a local buisness in the town, e-mail accounts for a dollar, have the
mail server connect with an isp and send cached e-mail messages out and in
every hour - community e-mail (GPGP required).

<rant>
A local telco in the area is buying up all the smaller ISPs and then
charging 19.99 for 180 hrs of service a month on a 53k dialup line.  So I
pay 19.99 a month to hook my parents up to the internet so i can chat with
them via icq, e-mail, etc (stamps would probally be cheaper, but heh).
<end rant>

So, if you are able to put togather some grants, I would love to partcipate
and/or use my hometown as a test site, provided the local demographics would
support it (ie. age of user, # of computer users, etc.)

d ...