Building Community Owned Decentralized Networks in rural India
summary
Claims that community-owned, offline-first networks can close rural gaps by putting infrastructure in locals' hands. The deployment uses Libre Routers (open hardware), Raspberry Pi edge devices and an OpenWRT-based mesh to serve recorded radio and school content locally across 34 villages, and it stretches internet backhaul over a 10 km link. It keeps classes running in the pandemic but still struggles with HTTPS tooling, power provisioning, usability of FOSS stacks and long-term local maintenance; the project solicits FOSS and hardware contributions.
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chapters (14)
- 0:00Community owned networks intro
- 1:19Rural India needs networks
- 4:27What is a community network
- 6:55Mesh networks in Karnataka
- 9:02Healthcare in Odisha
- 11:31Kutum governance model
- 15:29Tech and local traditions
- 17:14Customizing tech with crafts
- 18:57Challenges in self-hosting
- 20:43Vision for decentralized internet
- 21:29Oral traditions and accessibility
- 23:41Empowering local engineers
- 25:19Community engagement lessons
- 26:00Q&A
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