I am passionate about the world of co-operation in all its forms and for years I have sought to adapt co-operative organisation to the business of modern technology.

For fifteen years that meant working for Poptel, an innovative Internet services co-operative, owned by its employees. For the most part it was a fantastic experience culminating in the creation of the global top level Internet domain .coop. This may seem esoteric, but as .com came to define a period of rampant, often irrational capitalism on the net, many of us hope that .coop will come to represent a different set of values based on ‘social’ enterprise.

An idea from a Minister turns into a new approach to broadband cooperation

At the beginning of 2003 it was time for me to move on and, as I was thinking about what to do next, out of the blue I got a letter out from Stephen Timms. He suggested that I might like to get involved in supporting social enterprise approaches to broadband. At the same time Simon Berry from Ruralnet, my friends from the Phone Co-op, plus a whole host of people working in local projects like Daniel Heery and Lindsey Annison, were thinking along the same lines. ABC was emerging and the idea for CBN was born.

CBN started by organising the expertise needed to help people get local projects going. Core funding from the DTI, DEFRA, Co-op Action and Cisco got us off the ground. The Countryside Agency put resources into a mentoring system using the DirectSupport mechanism developed by Ruralnet for UK Online centres. It was a great start, launched at the ABC conference in January this year. Ruralnet took on the responsibility for administering CBN until it could become an independent organisation – and without their solid commitment CBN would have struggled to exist.

Phase two has now started. We have structured CBN as a co-operative open to community networks to join and help direct. Our key tasks now are to strengthen the sector through the development of joint services and activities - aiming to reduce cost - and to make it easier to set up new projects. The projects themselves are developing exciting new content and services relevant to our communities.

Benefits of a community focus

The power of a community-orientated approach is the engagement that it creates. I am getting direct and invaluable experience of this by helping to create a community network in my own locality, Lewisham in London. Boundless.coop is led by James Stevens who became famous as one of the creators of Consume.net. Boundless has the support of the local council, community organisations and (mainly) creative businesses in the area. There is a palpable frisson of excitement from the local creative community for the high bandwidth wireless mesh network that they are helping to build.

A proven model with a stake in the future

Over the past 18 months a number of people have said to me that this co-operative and social enterprise approach to broadband is all very well, but it’s a bit touchy-feely and won’t work in the real world. I say that they are profoundly wrong and that history is on the side of those who say otherwise. For nearly two hundred years people have been organising co-operative approaches to the provision of services that are needed in their communities. Today that equates to 750 million people around the world engaged in co-operative endeavour. They are linked by a common set of shared values. These are aspirational values aimed at democratising services, creating community-owned assets, promoting open access and education. As such these values have huge resonance in our own society and around the world.

Every day creators and members of community networks are putting these values into practice and helping to build a world in which broadband – and the societal benefits that can flow from broadband – become embedded in our communities and culture. This is not counterposed to the private sector or the state. We need both, but community networks are about supporting real people, doing real things, benefiting their own communities.

Community networks in action

An example I love is on www.cybermoor.tv. It is a video of Sonia Kempsey explaining the Gossipgate Gallery in Alston. This is ‘advertising’ with a huge difference. It is the woman who runs the place telling us what it is all about. Guess what, next time I am in the area, she’s found a new customer. How big is the tourist industry and how boring are the websites. Before long every community that wants to attract people will be making ‘adverts’ like this and they will be made through the community network. It is a message that is direct, accessible, unbounded by the costs and limitations of TV or radio - and in her own words. Local communications agencies will help refine these messages. Tourist agencies, hotel chains and multimap will create the web links.

Another example is Jake Strickland, manager of digital projects at the Albany Theatre in Deptford, who we quote in Boundless advertising, he says,

“This project is fantastic. I work with musicians and artists. Boundless will help them communicate more effectively with each other and their audiences.”

Jake’s ambition is to webcast events at his venue to wider audiences using the high bandwidth wireless network that he is helping to create. But actually it is much more, he wants to support all types of digital content creation delivered over a very low cost, massively disruptive technology. Every day he works with a host of Goldsmith’s students, music studios, young media and design companies. For all of them this new world is becoming an accepted part of their world.

CBN’s role as a new cooperative endeavour

The job of CBN is to unite all of the people involved in community networks, to support their endeavours and to ensure their voice is heard. The game is moving on from delivering basic broadband access – important though that is. Undoubtedly where the private sector finds it commercially tough, communities are delivering. But what the community networks are really delivering is high bandwidth, inclusive, engaging and relevant services in the communities of which they are part. It truly is revolution from the edge.