Obviously the article is not targeted to a technical audience. A quick summary: - guifi.net (you can visit the website for more info) is a non-profit foundatio

Obviously the article is not targeted to a technical audience. A quick summary: - guifi.net (you can visit the website for more info) is a non-profit foundation to support the development of an open, user-owned network. - Users, alone or by groups buy networking gear (nodes) that connects them to other nodes. - The result is a mesh network between all those nodes. Guifi.net develops and mantains (free-software based) software to manage the network. They have a website that centralizes information, manages the private IP space, and provides firmwares for the supported gear. - The network may be used for any purpose. If you want to build a VPN between two physical locations that both have guifi.net connevtivity you don't need to go to public internet. Aside from maintaining the networking gear, there are no fees either. - Getting internet connectivity is possible. You "just" need someone giving you an "exit gateway. This can be a friend with guifi.net connectivity AND a traditional telefonica/comcast connection. You can also buy internet access directly from the carriers at the CatNIX peering center (the foundation has laid out fiber connecting to that exchange). I don't know the fees. It is a cool project, but I can see how users can get unhappy if they pay for a node under the premise of "free connectivity" only to find themselves on a (quite large) private mesh network.