Telecommunications reaches almost every aspect of our daily lives. Today, communities are looking for cost effective ways to expand accessibility, achieve reliability, and save precious public dollars. More and more community leaders pursue local control of connectivity through public ownership, cooperative models, and other nonprofit approaches.
At MuniNetworks.org, we provide resources for those joining the movement to build broadband networks that are directly accountable to the communities they serve. Case studies, fact sheets, and video are some of the media we offer to help leaders make decisions about community owned networks.
We strive to offer resources for informed decisions because we know each community is unique. Telecommunications infrastructure is essential to the health and vitality of a community. Networks must be accountable first to the needs of the community, not the short-term interests of shareholders.
This site was made possible with funding from the Media Democracy Fund. It was created and is maintained by the Telecommunications as Commons Initiative of the New Rules Project of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance.
We work with communities across the United States to create the policies needed to ensure telecommunications networks serve the community rather than a community serving the network. The Institute for Local Self-Reliance is a non-profit organization that started in Washington D.C. in 1974.
ILSR's Mission:
The Institute’s mission is to provide innovative strategies, working models and timely information to support environmentally sound and equitable community development. To this end, ILSR works with citizens, activists, policymakers and entrepreneurs to design systems, policies and enterprises that meet local or regional needs; to maximize human, material, natural and financial resources; and to ensure that the benefits of these systems and resources accrue to all local citizens.
Contact Us
Email us or call Christopher Mitchell: 612-276-3456 x209
This is where the profit motive fails society -- there's no real financial incentive to provide coverage for someplace like Gilboa, New York, so therefore it isn't covered. But there is an incentive to prevent anyone else -- including the small town itself or, heaven forbid, the entire county -- from providing services to Gilboa because a David may grow up with the potential of killing Goliath.
Government does have an interest in seeing Gilboa, New York get access to broadband Internet coverage, because that would mean more employment opportunities, better educational facilities, and even more self-employment. In other words, like roads, sewage and utilities, broadband infrastructure is necessary to economic development.
