Making Community Networks economically sustainable, the guifi.net experience

Community networks have flourished around the world as complementary models for enabling access to the Internet and its services. Nevertheless, there is still an ongoing debate on how to make them sustainable and scalable beyond voluntary efforts and non-refundable contributions. The approach taken by Guifi.net has been to enable professional activity and to develop a set of tools to ensure the reinvestment of a fraction of the benefits of this professional activity. This has contributed to building the largest community network, with an annual turnover of millions of euros and the creation of dozens of direct jobs. The implementation of these tools is producing extensive data sets that allow characterisation of key parameters in the deployment and operation of these infrastructures to examine behaviours and trends and to identify good and bad practices, fraud, etc. A more detailed knowledge of the economic aspects has a positive effect on reducing the uncertainty of investments, expansion plans, and operations. CCS Concepts •Networks → Network design principles; Network economics; Network structure;