I admit to being a software rather than a hardware person, and being more high-level at that, so maybe there's a technological reason for it but: WHY can we not just take a whole buttload of Pi Zero W based devices (N-O-D-E nano server style) running a mesh network, plug them in all over Philadelphia, and solve [some of] the connectivity problems in low-income neighborhoods?
(This train of thought started with "Ooh Pi 400! Affordable computer!" but then thinking that's not the real issue.)
@gamehawk Red tape.
Regulations and local ordinances make this difficult to do legally and all sorts of ISP-style rules come into play.
If you can get the city council to agree with you, then the work can be started in earnest, but then *someone* has to maintain it all.
@nathand @gamehawk Entirely possible, but depends on regulatory structure...
e.g. https://atlasofthefuture.org/mesh-networks-parallel-internet/
(when I was Director of E-Learning at a state-fundee Academy with 3,000 students in a relatively deprived area, we couldn't do this because it 'competed' with BT)
@dajbelshaw @nathand Yeah, if Comcast can shut it down I'm sure it would.
@nathand I was kind of thinking more of a pirate network: everybody has their own node, no centralized ownership. Keeping nodes up-to-date (and not compromised) is a problem, of course, since you'd have a ton of naive "sysadmins" and the likely point-of-failure would be the distro from which one would update nodes (especially if you are updating the network *from* itself, where a mitm would probably be an issue. Wouldn't want the whole thing to be turned into a botnet.)
@gamehawk I'd say its perfectly doable if enough ppl get behind the idea.