Building community network policies: a collaborative governance towards enabling frameworks

Abstract

This book was elaborated thanks to the invaluable contributions of (in alphabetical order): Carlos Baca, Roger Baig Viñas, Peter Bloom, Walter Britto, Adam Burns, Jane Coffin, Mélanie Dulong de Rosnay, Nicolás Echániz, Bob Frankston, Judith Hellerstein, Kurtis Heimerl, Erik Huerta, Sonia Jorge, Laila Lorenzon, Osama Manzar, Glenn McKnight, Sivasubramanian Muthusamy, Leandro Navarro, Michael Oghia, Bruno Ramos, Ritu Srivastava, Nico Pace, and Karla Velasco. This volume is jointly published by Fundação Getulio Vargas (FGV) and the Internet Society (ISOC) and is the result of a participatory process developed by the Dynamic Coalition on Community Connectivity (DC3). DC3 is a multistakeholder group of the United Nations Internet Governance Forum (IGF), fostering a cooperative analysis of community networks, exploring how such initiative may be used to improve connectivity while empowering Internet users. Community networks are crowdsourced initiatives relying on the active participation of local communities in the design, development and management of network infrastructure as a common resource. This book provides concrete suggestions regarding the policy elements that should be considered by regulators and other stakeholders alike in order to develop enabling frameworks for community networks. This work complements the previous DC3 publications dedicated to “Community Connectivity: Building the Internet from Scratch” (2016); “Community Networks: the Internet by the People, for the People” (2017); and “The Community Network Manual: How to Build the Internet Yourself” (2018). All publications are freely available online.