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What's different between them and other companies? Didn't really get it. There are many small internet service providers who pretty much rent the infrastructure

• woah 10y ago
  The internet consists of the backbone and the last mile. The backbone is actually pretty diversified and competitive. Installing one cable that carries millions of connections is a pretty good business model. There are uplinks all over the country where you can connect to a data center and get huge connections for a few hundred dollars and up. For example, Hurricane Electric runs an uplink serving the northern Bay Area in Fremont, I believe. The last mile is much more of a pain in the ass. You have to bring connections to everyone's house and you are then installing one cable that carries one connection. This is why there has been little competition and people are generally unhappy with their ISPs. Guifi is addressing the last mile market with a network built by a cooperative non profit. They are in no way "renting infrastructure from the big guys". They are reselling bandwidth in the way that a supermarket resells produce. If the big guys had put last mile infrastructure into Catalonia, Guifi would not have started.
  • erikb 10y ago
    Ah okay. Their value is basically freeing up the last mile. Yeah that makes sense.