Toby Bloch is not like your average internet installation technician. He wears jeans and a jacket instead of a uniform with a logo. The back of his car is stuffed with a disorganized pile of hand tools, cables, and odd electronic devices. He isn't going to earn a dime for the appointment he is going to make in Brooklyn.
That is precisely the point. He isn't a normal internet install tech because he isn't one. He doesn't work for any of the large internet service providers. NYC Mesh is a guerrilla internet provider that helps residents get online without paying a monthly fee to the aforementioned telecom companies.
The group has been making waves in New York City by building up its own broadband network over the past few years. As it spreads across the city, it is also building a plan for other communities to follow as they stand up to monopolistic internet service providers.
It has been eye-opening to me just how bad the networks run by both Spectrum and Verizon are for their customers.
The internet in the United States is not great. 19 million Americans are without reliable internet according to the FCC. That's about 4% of the entire country's population and about 4% of the population of New York State, the nation's fourth-most populous state.
As more people worked from home, internet speeds plummeted. You're not imagining things if you felt like your internet speeds tanked. In New York, speeds dropped.
Even with stagnant or declining speeds, broadband prices have increased in recent years. The average price for an internet plan was more than $60 a month. It is more than $100 per month in places like Atlanta.
What is behind the high prices? It is likely a lack of competition. The majority of internet services in the US are controlled by a few large companies. According to a 2020 report from the Institute for Local Self Reliance, almost 50 million people only have access to broadband internet through a single provider. 47 million more have access through either Charter or Comcast.
The problem is amplified in New York. In 2008, then-mayor Michael Bloomberg brokered a deal that was supposed to change internet access in America's largest city. The provider took on Time Warner's local monopoly and ended it. Adding another internet service provider didn't fix all the city's problems. 20% of New Yorkers don't have internet access in their homes.
NYC Mesh comes in because New Yorkers are fed up.
How do you sign up for guerrilla broadband service and get it installed? It is surprisingly simple. When a customer reaches out to NYC Mesh, a request goes out to a Slack channel that houses a network of volunteer technicians. The operation is not centralized.
Mesh is a grassroots democratic organization. It is a very flat organization and I think that is one of the things that draws me to it. It is a bunch of volunteers, there is no full-time staff or paid staff.
Once a volunteer tech responds, they ask the potential customer to provide some panorama pictures on their rooftop so they can see if the potential member could have access to the network. The new member would have a wireless device on their roof. A neighboring building will have a connection to that one.
All of these points connect back to a few of the primary exchange points that provide direct access to the internet. The only limitation is that the customer must be within range of a node.
Mesh is able to deliver reliable and cheaper internet access to a lot of the city. After installation, members pay what they can, although it suggests they pay between $20 and $60 a month. The group is dependent on donations.
NYC Mesh has grown considerably in the past few years, but Bloch is quick to point out that what the organization is doing in New York is just one small part of the bigger picture. Mesh wants to make these kinds of internet techniques more accessible to the average person. The group doesn't want to be a middleman.
We are democratizing this technology and democratizing the knowledge by getting it out into the hands of people.
They have got some help. Mesh is one of the larger alternative internet service providers in the country. There is a separate community broadband cooperative called People's Choice in NYC, and a similar organization in Boston.
Does the internet uprising have what it takes to go nationwide?
The answer to that question is not clear. It is easier for NYC Mesh to put pressure on the big telecom power players than it is for similar organizations in other parts of the country. Texas, Minnesota, and Washington state have regulatory barriers that make it difficult to use community-based wi-fi networks.
There was a push to bar them at the federal level. Two people who serve on the House Commerce Committee and Subcommittee for Communications and Technology introduced that.
McMorris Rogers has a conflict of interest. She has received political donations from America's biggest telecom companies. According to the Federal Election Commission, through their various political action committees, Charter gave $5,000 to her ahead of her primary race.
The legal challenges from the federal level make it necessary to have access to high points, poles, and rooftops of apartment buildings in order to build a network of nodes. Not every town in the U.S. has the same number of high-rise buildings as NYC. It would be difficult to establish a mesh network in a suburb.
There is still hope that NYC Mesh's methods might kick off a trend.
While they may not work everywhere, organizations like Mesh could collectively put enough pressure on telecom giants in major metropolitan areas that they could be forced to respond. Regardless of how that plays out, the outcome will be the same for consumers: Cheaper, more accessible, more reliable internet.
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