I'm curious how much grass-roots last-mile efforts like community-funded networks are being factored into near-future network planning. In the two months I've been at my new job (network architect for Utah Education Network), I've been amazed at how much infrastructure activity is going on very quietly within communities. A lot of this is motivated by frustration with the lack of commercial infrastructure investment except in the most lucrative business areas, and a realization that there is not (and may never be) a business case to invest beyond those areas. Also relates to http://slashdot.org/articles/01/04/26/0446240.shtml In Utah (which not be representative) I'm aware of 12-15 such projects that are either under construction or will be completed in the next 1-3 years. These projects are running GigE to schools and govt, 10/100Mb Ethernet to homes and businesses. Community networks differ from traditional MANs in at least two ways: they are oriented towards wide-scale connectivity, usually of underserved areas (where MANs typically service dense business areas); and they appear to have more momentum in under-served geographies (ie non-NFL cities, and rural areas). In Utah, only 2 or 3 of the projects are urban, most are in communities on the urban fringe and in rural areas. Beyond driving the need for more bandwidth, especially in areas that don't have large pipes to the Net, these projects have the potential to make fundamental changes in the importance of local infrastructure. The biggest change may be to show that Geography Does Matter more than we think. The applications these networks will be used for are not just eBay and Amazon, it's video conferencing, community meetings, video on-demand, education, telemedicine, and many more important ones unimagined today. At least half the projects I'm aware of are looking for a local interconnect (ie Community Internet Exchange / Regional Exchange Point) to hand off traffic to other community, educational and commercial networks in the area. The national-level networks peer at such a course granularity that the majority of community network applications (video conferencing, video-on-demand, education, telemedicine) would fail for latency and performance reasons unless everyone connected to the same backbone. And there's your day's course in community networks. ;) Again, curious if anyone is seeing this on their radar and considering it in near- or long-term infrastructure planning. Pete.