I wonder if this would be feasible at the neighborhood level via Home owners association. The neighborhood gets a tower and microwave link to a backhaul station, and provides internet via wifi or wires to the neighborhood.
I think our neighboorhood is about 130 houses. probably not enough to make it cost effective.
On the flip side, maybe starting a local company to provide LOS microwave hookups to the various neighborhoods in the area could make it work.
If you can somehow convince your HOA to let you put up a tower, then yes, it's feasible. And if you are doing microwave link only, it's pretty cheap.
You can rent space on a nearby cell tower for a pricy-but-not-insane monthly fee, and they'll usually have decent backhaul already present. (American Tower had a WISP sales program specifically for this at one point, I'm not sure if they still do). Run point-to-point from there to your neighborhood via some microwave WISP gear.
If you had a volunteer from the HOA willing to setup and manage it (a bigger ask than it sounds like), and if all 130 houses would agree to pay $50/month, then the math would work out OK (at least, using pricing I got in suburban Michigan about 4 years ago).
> If you can somehow convince your HOA to let you put up a tower.
You don't have to convince them, let the FCC do that. I lived in an area with a heavy handed HOA. The only decent broadband was a WISP. They had a few go rounds with the HOA, but they can't regulate antennas. In the end the WISP put a tower on my roof - I never heard a word. They may try, but they don't have authority to regulate it.
> They had a few go rounds with the HOA, but they can't regulate antennas.
That's a little bit of an overstatement. HOAs can regulate antennas unless the FCC (or Congress) makes an exception.
In the case of WISP, there is an exception that applies: 47 CFR 1.4000 [1]. WISPs would fall under the exception for antennas for "fixed wireless signals". A "fixed wireless signal" is "any commercial non-broadcast communications signals transmitted via wireless technology to and/or from a fixed customer location".
I think you have a flawed assumption that the big telcos that own the tower and backhaul aren't going to charge content providers for access to that tower.
> you have a flawed assumption that the big telcos that own the tower and backhaul
Most cell towers are owned by a third party (not a big telco), and they'll lease to anyone if you have the cash, and the site has the capacity (physical space, weight/wind requirements, etc). You can lease from American Tower, Crown Castle, SBA, etc.
The existing backhaul is often owned by existing monopoly telecom providers. But not always. And competitive non-big-telco commercial operators will often install service to a site for you, if you are willing to pay for it. For example, I'm looking at a cell site in Michigan right now, that's deep in AT&T territory, but Sprint fiber is actually the installed backhaul provider, and four other commercial providers will install service there for a price.
You can know all of this upfront, before you sign anything, so there's very little risk in terms of tower space or backhaul availability. People have been doing this for decades now, it's not as ill-defined as it might seem.
Speaking from today's perspective, you're correct. But it won't be long until all the third parties et. al figure out they too can get into the paid access game. Contracts will be revised. Rents will be extracted. Because there are no regulations to put a check on greed.
Contrary to the claims made if one is to remove municipal blocks fiber is very easy and very cheap to install. What makes fiber installation expensive is municipal regulations
Clearly I’m not the guy to talk to about tor/onion. I’m wondering if a network could be set up across thousands of homes somehow and that network could purchase priority of its traffic. Basically there’s always a way to add another layer of abstraction to circumvent a lower layers restrictions.
Yes, a mesh network would work for that, then you just need a method to measure how much traffic each node serves then pay the node operators for that.
I know there were mesh networks with wireless microwave transmitters deployed in some rural areas, but I can't find the articles. It's probably going to get more and more attention though, along with distributed electricity and similar things as technology progresses.
I think our neighboorhood is about 130 houses. probably not enough to make it cost effective.
On the flip side, maybe starting a local company to provide LOS microwave hookups to the various neighborhoods in the area could make it work.