Nation of Hawai‘i
The Waimānalo Community Network is a resident-built and community-run broadband network established in 2019, with the help of the Internet Society. Community members worked with Hawaiian Telecom to connect to nearby fiber, bringing it to the community center from where LTE service is broadcasted to their 14 subscribers. Community members trenched the 600 feet of fiber, applying their experience trenching waterlines, and subscribers helped install the equipment on their own homes. An LTE network was the appropriate choice because of the dense tree cover on the land. The network operates on unlicensed 5 GHz spectrum band using equipment donated by Baicells. The small community, of less than a 100 people, is Hawaii’s oldest sovereignty group with a 45-acre land base that they acquired through a 15-month occupation of state lands. They see internet connectivity as essential to the exercise of their sovereignty as an independent nation, and see the community network as a pilot for what an independent indigenous nation of Hawaii could be.
Read more about Waimānalo Community Network here, here, and here.