Calling the ISP's bluff directly will likely be counterproductive. Snoop around and see if you can find a fiber cabinet anywhere. It's not uncommon to get man

Calling the ISP's bluff directly will likely be counterproductive. Snoop around and see if you can find a fiber cabinet anywhere. It's not uncommon to get many km between fiber repeaters so it's entirely possible that the cabinets will be located well out of town making it more difficult. If you find one close in then you can move on to phase two. Call them up and pretend to be a businessman who wants to lease a fiber line to connect his small, local, automated manufacturing plant centered close to the fiber cabinet and lease a fiber to a big city somewhere where the "servers" are located in a colo facility. It's all blatant lies but it will tell you if the ISP is willing to play ball for money or if they really can't be bothered. If they are willing to lease you a line you've solved the back-haul side of the problem. The tough part becomes cobbling together enough people right near where the cabinet is who will all invest in a non-profit to get the thing off the ground. Once you have the infrastructure in place adding an additional user or ten gets much easier. I am not really sure how to build the necessary demand in the group of people who live right near the cabinet. Plan a meeting and go door-to-door? A lot of the success there depends on people feeling enough sense of community to go in on the whole thing. If it's a small enough town you've got a decent shot at it. Try and get some respected elders to join up with you even if they're not on the city council; my mom's dad lives in a small town (where his dad also lived) and he's said he could get elected to city council if he just ran since everyone knows and respects the family name. I wish you the best. It would be great to see more of these kinds of things crop up.