29 June, 2011
By Greg Morgan
Residents of Jalalabad in Afghanistan have grouped together and built their own Internet. In an amazing story of innovation, residents have built the open source FabFi network from common building materials and off-the-shelf electronics.
While they did receive a little help from a National Science Foundation grant, each FabiFi network node was made from approximately $60 worth of everyday items such as boards, wires, plastic tubs, and cans. In order to gain access to high speed Internet, the residents of Jalalabad had to do it themselves, and now they have a system that transmits wireless Ethernet signals distances of several miles.
In FabLabs, technology brings people and ideas together. FabFi embraces this same principle. The public hospital, which houses the endpoint of FabFi Afghanistan’s longest link, has become a shared community resource, providing downlinks to a growing number of locations in the city center.
The shared infrastructure facilitates communication between FabFi users all over the city as they collaboratively grow and maintain the network. The FabFi user group is learning valuable skills that will soon allow them to generate revenue for themselves and the Lab by building, installing and maintaining FabFi links as part of a “FabFi Club” at the FabLab.
This inspiring work could have implications around the world, as some governments try harder to control Internet access through infrastructure and filters. While the Netherlands have recently become the first country in the EU to pass a comprehensive Net Neutrality law, the United States and other Western countries have not yet done so.
Douglas Rushkoff is one commentator who has championed the idea of an open Internet, saying “If we have a dream of how social media could restore peer-to-peer commerce, culture, and government, and if the current Internet is too tightly controlled to allow for it, why not build the kind of network and mechanisms to realize it?”
