Building a community owned Internet Service Provider (ISP)
For over four years, over 1800 NYC members of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) have been on strike with their employer, Spectrum, after it acquired Time Warner Cable and took away their healthcare, retirement and other benefits. It is the longest standing strike in U.S history, and while Spectrum continues to ignore their employees, the cable techs on strike are building a Internet Service provider called “People’s Choice” that is cooperatively owned.
Workers with over 40 years of experience in building NYC cable infrastructure teamed together to address the slow speeds, high prices, and spotty coverage found across low-income neighborhoods in NYC during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“After we build out a network in your building, it transfers to cooperative ownership, so profits are returned to users,” the organization’s website states. “We are able to provide high-speed service in most cases for $10 to $20 a month. No more cable company ripping you off, and as an owner, you have a vote in policies like data privacy.”
If someone is interested in bringing People’s Choice to their building, they can fill out a form. The organization deliberately works in affordable housing, supportive housing, co-op housing, NYCHA [NYC Housing Authority], homeless shelters, and regular old apartment complexes to fill broadband gaps. In less than a years time, People’s Choice has already delivered broadband to two schools and a housing complex for domestic violence survivors with disabilities in the Bronx.
People’s Choice builds off NYC Mesh, a community based ISP completely ran by volunteers and donations. These ventures are apart of a growing trend of tech-empowered citizen participation across the country. Today, there are over 750 American neighborhoods building their own broadband networks creating shifts of power, wealth and voice. Local governments can learn from grassroots ventures like People’s Choice and NYC Mesh by leveraging intrinsic and extrinsic motivations in network-based systems to do more for the public good.
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