Thanks for the headsup Russel. There are lots of different models in use by different groups around the world. One of my favorites is freifunk in Berlin and a bunch of other cities in Germany. They have built a peer produced wireless mesh freenetwork there, which works well in urban situations where you might have a node every kilometer or so. There are around 1000 nodes in Berlin, each of which serves say 10 users +. Another one in Catalunya guifi covers 150km x 150 km north of Barcelona in a rural area. That network is an open access local network based on point to point links. They are at about 4500 nodes and growing fast. Another is Djurslandsnet in Denmark that uses a fiber backbone and wireless breakouts to cover a whole province in a network co-op serving 10,000 households. In Wanganui we're looking at bringing elements of these and other models together, maybe mesh in towns, point to point in rural areas, and fibre wherever it can be found. The project is at a very early stage right now but I've put up a stub site at wha.net.nz and a mailing list there where I'd like to explore the options and see what is going to make sense for Wanganui. Please feel free to join in and I'll post back to Russel as the project develops.