Guest blog post from Juergen Neumann, co-founder of Freifunk. Cross-posted from International Summit for Community Wireless Networks.
This year's International Summit for Community Wireless Networks was chosen to be hosted in Berlin to help commemorate the 10 year anniversary of the Freifunk network.
Freifunk.net was started in March 2003 with the launch of the first version of the freifunk.net website. It was the first significant attempt at brand design and provided some of the first articles on how to set up wireless networks. It was inspired by similar wireless networking projects from the U.S. and England. Freifunk soon became a localized platform for community Wi-Fi activities in German speaking countries, a reaction to the fact that at this time many areas lacked broadband coverage, particularly in areas of former East Germany.
Soon after the launch of the Freifunk website traffic grew from 200 to over 100,000 visits per month! Featuring wikis, event calendars, blogs and mailing lists, the website became more decentralized, allowing for regional Freifunk groups to run their own web-platforms. More Freifunk communities were started and more people joined. It was a great success!
Then Freifunk experienced some challenges when DSL broadband became more widely available for home subscription. But then the demand for mobile wireless broadband access grew and interest in Freifunk community networks grew again.
Today Freifunk continues to face challenges from commercial mobile networks. Yet Freifunk continues to have opportunities attract new members, for both implementing VPN solutions to questions of secondary liability for wireless network hosts in Germany, but also for providing the public with an example of local-controlled, decentralized networks at a time when more and more people are concerned about large companies and governments having too much power in the online world.
Freifunk has faced many challenges and opportunities over the last 10 years and the telco's latest offloading plans might be the next one. But Freifunk is mainly an idea, the idea that individuals can build and control their own communications networks. And who can stop an idea?