BUILD OUR OWN INTERNET, TO SAVE NET NEUTRALITY

The Federal Communications Commission in the US is preparing a full repeal of net neutrality rules that require broadband providers to give consumers equal access to all content on the internet, putting more power in the hands of those companies to dictate people's online experience.

It is time to take action, and that does not mean signing an online petition, upvoting a Reddit post or calling your member of Congress.
Net neutrality as a principle of the federal government will soon be dead, but the protections are wildly popular among the American people and are integral to the internet as we know it. Rather than putting such a core tenet of the internet in the hands of politicians, whose whims and interests change with their donors, net neutrality must be protected by a populist revolution in the ownership of internet infrastructure and networks.
In short, the people of the internet need to end their reliance on big telecom monopolies and build decentralized, affordable, locally owned internet infrastructures. The great news is this is currently possible in most parts of the United States.

There has never been a better time to start your own internet provider, leverage the publicly available fibre backbone, or build public support for new, local-government owned networks. Small ISPs have committed to protecting net neutrality to bring affordable high-speed internet to towns and cities across the country. A future in which ISPs are owned by local governments, small businesses, nonprofit community groups, and the people they serve are the path forward and the only realistic way of ending big telecom's stranglehold on America.

In Detroit, the Equitable Internet Initiative is building community-owned wireless internet infrastructure in towns that big telecom won't touch. Hundreds of towns have built their own internet service providers. Rural communities are putting wireless internet antennas on top of mountains, grain silos and tall trees. The fastest internet connections in the United States are provided by local governments and not big telecom. In Southern California, Tribal Digital Village is using unused television spectrum to deliver internet.

All over the country, big telecom is being rejected and subverted and you do not need to have a pile of money, an army of lawyers or a degree in network engineering to take action.