If you cite this thesis please include its URL, which is http://www.tela.bc.ca/ma-thesis/). Thanks!
Part III - Empirical Findings and Analysis.
Chapter Six - Description of Selected Community Networks. 6.0 Introduction.
The following capsule histories of each community network organization are derived primarily from the interviews. They are presented here in order to provide background to the context in which the organizations operate and to document the early years of the community networking movement in British Columbia.
Figure III - Map of British Columbia, showing networks studied.
6.1 Campbell River Community Network.
Campbell River is a small city on the west coast of Vancouver Island, with a 1991 population of nearly 35,000. (British Columbia regional index, 1995, p. 48.) It is located at roughly the midpoint of the island, and is the largest population centre at the north end of the Island. Its economy is mainly based on primary industry, with large mining interests and pulp mills providing the central base of employment. Unlike coastal Island communities further south it does not currently have a large retired population, although the current expansion of the main transportation artery to the area, the Island Highway, will likely bring with it an increasing number of retirees. High technology industry in the area is almost non-existent, although the population base is sizeable enough to sustain a computer retail segment of the economy, so access to consumer-level computer technology is quite reasonable.
6.1.1 Historical background to the community network.
Like most community networks, the Campbell River Community Network began with a small core of dedicated individuals impressed with the vision of community networking. Jeff Goodship, a former employee of the school district, became familiar with the AzTeC community network run out of the Arizona State University in Tempe. He decided such a network would be very beneficial for Campbell River. An initial meeting was held in June of 1994 with Goodship and a handful of other interested individuals. These included Pat Presidente, a technology resource teacher with the school district; Garry Griffin, a manager with CIBC (the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce) and Roger McDonnell, then involved with the local chamber of commerce.
They decided after the first meeting that there was sufficient interest in creating a community network to proceed with some form of an organizing committee, and announced a larger public meeting the next month. They were overwhelmed by the response when some 100 people turned up in a room large enough for 40 people. Shortly thereafter the organization registered itself as a non-profit provincial society under the name 'Campbell River FreeNet.' They later responded to pressure from the NTPN concerning the name 'FreeNet' and renamed themselves the 'Campbell River Community Network.'
A number of interests drove the early days of the community network. At that time there was virtually no access to the Internet in Campbell River. There was a thriving bulletin board (BBS) community, but like most such communities it tended to focus on local hobbyist, videogaming and teenager interests. Some individuals purchased access to large commercial online systems, but these involved costly long-distance phone calls to Victoria, at the southern end of the island. There was thus a good deal of interest in networking that was not being met by commercial operations at the time.
Another imperative in the early days was that of promoting local community discussions, and communications in general. Campbell River does not have a daily newspaper; only two weekly papers are published in the region. The Victoria Times-Colonist had recently discontinued daily home delivery to the area, and the result was a fairly significant information gap that hampered announcements regarding local events. This was of particular concern to the chamber of commerce, which felt that the absence of a community information hub such as a newspaper, that could provide a regularly updated community information bulletin or calendar, was detrimental to local economic development. All promotions of local events were generally done through informal contacts, posters, faxing, telephone and the like.
In addition, the school district was becoming interested in networking local schools for electronic communications, both for administrative and educational purposes. They had some connectivity through the provincial government's Community Learning Network (cln) via the government-owned BC Systems Corporation, but were limited at that time to modem access over telephone lines.
The final key element of the project resulted from a remarkably fortuitous opportunity that makes Campbell River unique in Canadian community networks. Unlike most areas of the country, Campbell River's cable television interests are not controlled by large corporations. Most Canadian cities have cable networks owned by one of three giants: Rogers Cablesystems of Toronto, Shaw Cable of Calgary or Vidéotron of Montreal. However Campbell River has its own CRTV, a locally owned and controlled service run in the manner of a cooperative. Each resident with cable television pays a $100 debenture in addition to monthly rates in order to be serviced by the system.
The significance of this local cable ownership is profound. At one level this means that Campbell River residents enjoy some of the lowest cable television rates in the country, but more importantly their television access is not controlled by outside profit-oriented interests in remote cities. They have direct control over the physical network and over the content of the system. Two of the founders of the Campbell River Community Network, Griffin and McDonnell, were also board members of CRTV. They proposed that CRTV use its extensive coaxial cable network to carry computer data in addition to regular video signals. Their motion passed, and the fledgling community network acquired in a moment a sophisticated and high-bandwidth (ie: high-capacity) communications infrastructure that spans the city. The bandwidth of this network is of particular note. At 10 Mbps (megabits per second) this network runs at the speed of a local Ethernet network, rather than the considerably slower 14.4 or 28.8 Kbps (kilobits per second) speed of regular telephone modems.
The community network then moved quickly to consolidate its relationship with the school district, which moved away from the provincial government's CLN in favour of the local community network. It used the community network and the cable company as the networking backbone for its educational networking needs. The community network was also able to secure a sizeable grant of $18,000 from the Vancouver Foundation, a non-profit charitable foundation, to help with their startup phase.
6.1.2 The technology.
By March of 1995 a test system consisting of a consumer-level 486 personal computer had been acquired, and was made accessible via four dialup phone lines and the cable network. The hardware was installed on the premises of CRTV itself. Rather than using a complex UNIX-based system like most community networks, Campbell River chose instead a much simpler but still quite flexible software package known as Worldgroup. Developed by a relatively small US software development company, Worldgroup focuses on providing local email, real-time chat services and discussion groups, with protocol gateways to the Internet. It uses custom software running on personal computers running Windows software, but is also accessible over old text-only systems.
Within a year the community network had expanded its server base to two Pentium-class servers, hosting 16 dialup telephone lines. These telephone lines have a very wide catchment area, in part through creative use of telephone forwarding techniques. The local phone company, BCTel, has a complex set of rate structures and zones in the area. But by acquiring a dialup number in one calling zone and forwarding each incoming call to another number in the next zone, the community network was able to encompass a large geographical area without the need for long-distance calls. In fact their effective local calling area stretches as far south as the Comox Valley and Hornby Island and as far north as Sayward and Cortez Island; a distance along the coast of over 130 kilometres.
Many schools in the area are also linked to the network via the cable system. The cable network is not used to deliver data to home or business users as yet, (some 12,000 potential subscribers) although the community network intends to do so as soon as is practicable. They have an extensive fibre optic trunk network in place, but cable modems are not yet a consumer product. Cable modem technology is, however, maturing rapidly owing to tremendous pressure from large commercial interests.
The community network also provides Internet access through a connection with Nanaimo-based Island Internet, a commercial Internet service provider. In many areas there has been a good deal of tension and conflict between the community network and local ISPs, but this has been avoided in Campbell River. Indeed, the Campbell River dialup hardware owned by Island Internet is housed in the CRTV facilities alongside the community network. According to the respondents, Island Internet and the other commercial provider in town, Digital Ark, view the community network not as a threat but as a useful education base. Users often migrate, in a sense, from the training grounds on the community network to the commercial operations.
6.1.3 Local information.
The community network is very much oriented towards the provision of local information content. The system houses an 'Information Centre' which contains calendars for schools, information from the chamber of commerce, municipal information, synopses of city council minutes, a guide to local parks and recreation facilities, and so on. Information updates are maintained by the local volunteer society.
Another area of interest is making important local and regional information available to users. One of the respondents cited the example of the Nisga'a agreement. In mid February 1996 the federal and provincial governments and the Nisga'a Tribal Council announced that they had reached an agreement in principle concerning a treaty over the Nass river valley in northern British Columbia. The agreement was published in full on a provincial government Internet server. Shortly thereafter the Campbell River community network made the full text available for all its users; even those without Internet access.
Other local information includes updates from the District of Campbell River and the Municipality of Sayward, a small town to the north of Campbell River. The local hospital maintains in-patient and out-patient information and rules. And there is an extensive database containing contact information for some 400 local clubs and organizations.
As with other community networks the respondents reported a fair amount of difficulty in bringing organizations online. Even larger, more established organizations such as local government have proved difficult. The reasons the respondents cited included lack of adequate training, some fear or apprehension of the technology and a feeling that posting information electronically was not of particularly high priority. Nevertheless the community network now has some two dozen or so local groups updating their own information, and the network is working on expanding this number. Respondents also noted that some organizations, such as CRTV, are now using the network as a form of in-house communications infrastructure, as board members regularly use email to keep in touch.
6.1.4 User Structure.
Guests to the system (people who have not registered for an account in their name) have free read-only access to all local information. Users can apply for free accounts, which permit them to send and receive local email, chat with other users online and participate in local discussion groups. Internet access is not available to these free accounts, but can be purchased for $25 per year. Interestingly, the community network reports than some 80% of their user base does not elect for this Internet option but stays with the local material only. The network also sells memberships for an extra $10 per year, which permits users an additional 45 minutes per day of access to the system's dialup lines. (regular users can only use the system for 45 minutes per day.)
According to the respondents interviewed with the community network, the most commonly used non-information services on the system tend to be affected by the age of the user. Older users favour email, often for keeping in contact with family members around the province and the world. Children and adolescents, on the other hand, enjoy using the local realtime chat service, which permits them to hold live text-based conversations with other users of the system.
6.1.5 Commercial content.
As noted earlier, the Campbell River community network has fairly close ties with commercial interests, particularly Island Internet. Their commercial content policies are correspondingly liberal. They permit, for example, local businesses to purchase space on the system for advertising purposes. The key, however, is local. Businesses are expected to be focusing their marketing attention to local commerce only. Companies interested in larger-scale marketing efforts are directed to commercial ISPs such as Island Internet.
An important point of note is that respondents emphasized that local economic development was of great interest and importance to the organization. Unlike community networks in large metropolitan areas, for whom local economic development is less of an issue for obvious reasons, the Campbell River organization self-consciously sees itself as promoting the local computer-mediated telecommunications infrastructure for the benefit of the local economy. The network is also seen as a valuable promotional tool for selling the region to outside business interests; a kind of online chamber of commerce brochure. The organization's advertising policies are thus in line with this general philosophy.
6.1.6 Public Access.
As with all community networks, public access sites are a highly desired but costly service, owing to the expense of maintaining a telephone line for a modem. The organization has four public access terminals currently in use and funded by each host. One controlled-access site is located in the city hall. Another full-access site is located at the public library, one in the hospital and one at the CRTV offices. There are plans to expand to include the local chamber of commerce.
The respondents did not believe that access to the computer hardware was as critical an issue as in some low-income areas. They noted that Campbell River has a relatively high average income, and that two of the largest local employers, timber firms, have instituted employee purchase programs to encourage workers to buy personal computers.
6.2 The Mount Arrowsmith Community Network.
The Mount Arrowsmith Community Network (MACN) serves the Parksville / Qualicum region of eastern Vancouver Island. The region is notable for its large retired population, drawn to the area for its mild climate. (at least in comparison with the rest of Canada.) It is also something of a bedroom community for the city of Nanaimo, to the south. The area does not have any significant high technology industry. The 1991 population for the Parksville / Qualicum area was 28,000. (British Columbia regional index, 1995, p. 35.)
6.2.1 Historical background to the community network.
MACN had its origins with chair Jim Swanson, who was involved with educational technology projects through his work as a teacher. He was acquainted with Gareth Shearman of the Victoria Free-Net, and was thus familiar with that organization's goals and directions. In conjunction with secretary Douglas Stolar and vice chair Bob Dobinson, he decided that a community network could have great potential for the region, and their first meeting was held in May of 1994, at which Shearman spoke and gave a live demonstration of the Victoria system.
Figure IV - Mount Arrowsmith Community Network title graphic.
Considerable interest was sparked by this first meeting, and soon monthly public meetings were being held to plan the community net. The organization was officially registered (under the name Mount Arrowsmith Free-Net) in July of 1994. Respondents reported that a good deal of the early impetus came from the fact that the region did not have any local Internet access at the time, and residents felt somewhat shut out from the new networking technology. Additionally there was a feeling of 'We can do it here - we don't have to be in a big city to do it' associated with the early organization.
The community network was the beneficiary of considerable early support from both the local school district and from the local career centre. MACN has access to a networked lab of computers at Oceanside Middle School, and it uses this facility to great advantage by holding regular meetings at which volunteers and newcomers can learn and familiarize themselves with the system. And it was the beneficiary, in conjunction with the local employment centre, of a federal government CAP (Community Access Program) grant in 1995.
They purchased their initial hardware in August of 1995 and made the decision to work with the Linux free UNIX operating system. By October of 1995 they had a pilot system running, but it was purely for local dialup only - they had no Internet connectivity at all. The fact that their system was completely isolated from the outside world was definitely a disadvantage, and so by December they purchased a UUCP (UNIX to UNIX copy program) feed to a local Internet provider. This gave them batch-sent email and Usenet news, but did not support any direct telnet connections to the Internet. However provision of those services alone was a considerable step forward in capability. Unfortunately, obtaining direct access to the Internet proved difficult to obtain, owing to the relatively poor network connectivity of the region and thus the expense in obtaining a full feed. MACN did not get fully connected to the Internet until the summer of 1996.
Technical problems aside, MACN has been vigorous in promoting local participation in its system development. Respondents noted that their association's regular monthly meetings are well attended by members, and users of their system have a great deal of direct input into the design of their growing service. They did add, however, that the immense technical delays, largely caused by funding restraints, in obtaining an Internet feed have been something of a frustration and disappointment, both for the volunteers with the organization and with the community at large.
6.3 Nanaimo Online.
Nanaimo is a small city on the west coast of Vancouver Island, at a latitude roughly equivalent to Vancouver's. It has a 1991 area population of some 73,000 people, (British Columbia regional index, 1995, p. 32.) and was historically a forest industry town. In recent years, however, its economy has shifted towards tourism and sport fishing. It is also known as the ferry terminus for passenger ferries from Horseshoe Bay, immediately north of Vancouver. The region has a significant retired population, owing to its mild climate by Canadian standards. As with other coastal Island communities, the Nanaimo region is spread out in a line along the coast, from southeast to northwest, with the Island Highway forming its backbone.
6.3.1 Historical background to the community network.
Nanaimo Online (NO) is an unusual project as community networks go, for two separate reasons. The first involves the manner in which it was founded. In 1994 Gary Korpan was elected mayor of the city on a platform that could generally be called one of 'open government.' Korpan had a keen interest in information technology, and was a participant in Nanaimo's world of local personal computer user groups and bulletin boards. He was interested in using computer-mediated technology of some sort to promote the communications of the citizenry with city hall. However, in keeping with the 1990s tradition of budget cutbacks and limited services, he did not want such a service to be funded directly by the municipality. Instead he suggested a volunteer-run community service be created.
Figure V - Nanaimo Online logo.
In response to this suggestion a local newspaper advertisement was taken out in the late summer of 1994, asking interested parties to attend a public meeting on the topic of forming a community network. Several dozen people turned up in response to the ad, and shortly thereafter Nanaimo Online was formed as a volunteer non-profit society. There was a very small amount of seed capital provided by the city, but otherwise Nanaimo Online has had no direct support from the municipal government. This sort of founding - an initiative at the municipal being spun off to the non-profit sector - appears to be quite unusual for a community network.
The second area in which Nanaimo Online is atypical involves the decision of its board not to build up a large technology infrastructure. In fact, Nanaimo Online may not be considered a true community network at all by many definitions, because it lacks its own dialup facilities or even server hardware. Most importantly it does not provide email accounts. Instead the network consists entirely of informational content in the form of pages of Web-based information, and the volunteer structure to put it there and maintain it. Users are required to find their own dialup provision if they want to access the system.
The organization struck up a relationship early on with the local school district, SD 68, which had built up its own sophisticated communications infrastructure. At that time there was one commercial Internet service provider (ISP) in the area, and SD 68 was also permitting the public to use its own dialup facilities outside of school hours. A large number of people were thus exposed to Internet connectivity via slip (serial line Internet protocol) dialup lines even before local market demand had risen. In fact, the popularity of SD 68's public service was probably an early stimulus to Nanaimo's ISP market. SD 68's UNIX-based Web server is thus the host for Nanaimo Online's activities. Freed of the responsibilities of building up a host system or dialup modem services, the organization has instead focused on the provision of information to the community.
Nanaimo Online still has strong ties with the city administration, however. Chair Cam Scott administers the city's Web-based information systems. Per Kristensen of the city's Information Systems office and Don Grant, the city's special projects coordinator, are also involved.
6.4 The National Capital FreeNet - Libertel de la Capitale nationale.
Ottawa, Canada's capital city, is located on the Ottawa River, which forms the boundary between Ontario and Quebec. The Ottawa-Carleton region has a population of 693,000 (Canadian Almanac and Directory, 1996), and a high percentage of the jobs in the area are directly related to the presence of many government offices. In addition to government bureaucracy some outlying suburbs, such as Kanata and Nepean, have a fairly well-developed high technology industrial base.
6.4.1 Historical background to the community network.
Although the Victoria Free-Net was officially the first Canadian community network to be opened to the public, the Ottawa region's National Capital FreeNet (NCF) was actually an older organization. Although not based in British Columbia it is included in this survey because of its importance as a pioneer in the Canadian community networking field.
Figure VI - National Capital Free-Net logo.
In November of 1991 Jay Weston and George Frajkor, of Carleton University's school of journalism, heard about the Cleveland Free-Net and decided that a similar system should be put into place in the Ottawa region. With their background in journalism they had a strong interest in the democratic potential for citizen communication, and thus found the idea of a community-run community network to be very appealing. They promoted the concept to David Sutherland of the university's Computing and Communication Services, who enthusiastically helped them set up a similar service in Canada.
The NCF, running out of donated space in Carleton's computer room, soon became the second-largest community network in the world, garnering great support from the community and from local companies, including strategically useful ones such as the Ottawa Citizen newspaper. Like Victoria the NCF also relied on the FreePort software from CWRU, although it added the unique feature of bilingual menus in English and French.
As one of the pioneers in the Canadian community network movement the NCF received a sizeable amount of government and corporate assistance in addition to support from Carleton. The social democrat ndp government of the time provided a large piece of funding as part of its telecommunications infrastructure program, which allowed the NCF to acquire a sizeable dialup pool of modems-eventually over 160 lines. (Ontario Network Infrastructure Program, 1993.) The initial donation of their Sun Sparc 10 UNIX server was funded by Sun Microsystems and Industry, Science and Technology Canada (now Industry Canada) and they also received support from local telecommunications hardware maker Gandalf.
Like most community networks in the country, the NCF is currently in the process of moving towards a Web-based system.
6.5 Nechako Access Network Organization (NANO)
The Nechako Access Network Organization (NANO) is based in the town of Vanderhoof, a remote agricultural community located in the interior of British Columbia. The 1991 population of the Vanderhoof area is approximately 15,500 people. (British Columbia regional index, 1995, p. 324.) It is a very large region, some 2,000 square kilometres, and thus has a very low population density.
6.5.1 Historical background to the community network.
NANO had its origins in September 1994 with John Rowlandson, who had recently moved to Vanderhoof. He noticed that there were no opportunities for the public to access the Internet, except for placing long-distance calls to Vancouver and other large centres, and so put up a notice in a local co-op asking if anyone else was interested in looking into the problem. He got a small group together, and NANO had its first directors' meeting in November of that year. From this meeting a core group of directors was formed.
The directors met fairly regularly for the next few months, fundraising extensively. By August of 1995 they had raised some $20,000 from local funds, and were able to get a test system based on consumer PC hardware and the Linux operating system online. Later they also became a beneficiary of a federal government CAP (Community Access Program) grant. By October of 1995 Canada's first rural remote community network was operational.
Originally NANO obtained a network feed via the local school district, SD 56. It had a fractional T1 (128K) connection through WesTel Communications for use by school administrators, and NANO was able to purchase excess capacity of that feed for use with its community networking services for a brief period.
The school district underwent some political changes, however, amalgamating with another neighbouring district. As a result its excess network capacity was no longer available and NANO was forced to look elsewhere. After extensive discussions with local business, NANO ended up forming a partnership with what was to become a local Internet service provider. It now anchors this service, providing access via four dialup lines to its text-only system for a mandatory $35 per annum fee. However, users coming in via NANO's public access sites, and thus not tying up the dialup lines, do not have to pay this fee. At present it has 230 members.
The respondent interviewed mentioned a number of difficulties in reaching certain segments of the community. First, the area is the base for a number of agricultural religious communities, such as a settlement of Mennonites. These communities tend to be very traditional in nature, and frequently shun new forms of technology. The Mennonites in particular, while not strict Old Order, are nevertheless distrustful of modern technology.
Second, the area has an extremely high percentage of party line telephones - lines shared by several residences. One consequence of this is that modem use is impossible, because CRTC {19} (Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission) regulations do not permit modem use on party lines. The First Nations reserves, for example, are largely served by party lines and thus would have no way of accessing a dialup system even if they had the computers necessary to do so. The party line issue is a major one in the area, and NANO has taken an active role in highlighting the problem in the media as part of its advocacy work. It also organized a petition to the government over the question.
Community outreach is of great importance to NANO. In the summer of 1996 the organization was able to hire a pair of summer students to work on training programs to help people learn the system. In addition, NANO has built an innovative portable Mobile Access Centre designed for the purposes of rural training and outreach. This access centre consists of four laptop-style personal computers, linked together in a small local area network. (lan) It has the necessary hardware so that all four connections can be multiplexed over a single phone line. It is thus easy to pack up the system, take it to a workplace or private residence, plug it into the telephone and have an instant online training centre - in familiar, non-threatening surroundings - for up to four people simultaneously.
In addition to this mobile centre the organization maintains public access terminals at the local public library, Vanderhoof's adult learning centre and the chamber of commerce.
6.6 Prince George Free-Net.
Prince George is a small city in British Columbia's north-central interior. Historically its economy has focused around the lumber industry, and several large pulp mills and sawmills are based locally. The 1991 population of the area was approximately 87,000 people. (British Columbia regional index, 1995, p. 269.) In the early 1990s the provincial government opened British Columbia's fourth publicly-funded university, the University of Northern BC, in Prince George.
6.6.1 Historical background to the community network.
The Prince George Free-Net had its start with local public library trustee Lynda Williams. She was involved with teaching information systems technology, and met Gareth Shearman of the Victoria Free-Net at a library conference in Vancouver. He suggested that she consider starting up a FreeNet in Prince George. Williams was well acquainted with both the local library community and the technical people involved in running local bulletin board systems, and so took the idea back with her.
The Prince George FreeNet Association was founded in June of 1993, and the group held regular meetings at the local public library. Their first public meeting attracted some 100 people which, given the size of Prince George, represented tremendous interest in the idea. The organization's first technical forays involved working with a local bulletin board system called the Hidden Hideaway, run by Joe Tailleur.
After a year of experimentation with local discussion areas on Hidden Hideaway, the group was able to negotiate an Internet connection through the University of Northern BC. Lyndon Nerenberg, then involved with networking systems at UNBC, joined the PG Free-Net's board as technical vice-president. By June of 1994 the community network had converted its bulletin board to run CWRU's FreePort software, and was connected to the Internet. The organization made a point of using consumer-level 486 personal computer hardware for its server, taking the view that it should not be necessary for smaller communities to have to invest in extremely expensive UNIX workstations to get online.
The group was also the recipient of a large startup grant through three local science and economic development organizations - Business, Culture and Tourism; the Science Council of British Columbia and the Northern Interior Science, Technology and Innovations Council. (NISTIC) This grant allowed them to purchase the original BBS hardware and open with four public dialup phone lines.
The Prince George Free-Net now hosts 12 incoming dialup lines, and successfully runs entirely on a donation basis. The respondent interviewed noted that some 80% of the system's 1400 users contribute a yearly membership fee to keep the system self-sustaining. It continues to obtain its Internet feed via UNBC. Like most community networks that use the original Cleveland Free-Net FreePort software, it is working on moving to a Lynx-based Web system.
PG Free-Net's president, Lynda Williams, has also been involved in promoting the community network concept to other towns in interior British Columbia. She has given talks at Kamloops, Quesnel and Vanderhoof, to encourage local residents to set up their own systems. She also played a critical role in the early days of both Telecommunities Canada and BC FreeNet (now BC Community Networks), serving as a founding member of both organization's boards. She continues to serve as a board member of BC Community Networks.
The PG Free-Net was originally affiliated with the US NTPN, and in fact modelled itself quite deliberately after the successful Cleveland Free-Net model. However, like many other Canadian community networks it objected very strongly to the NTPN's announcement that it was intending to charge large fees for use of the name 'FreeNet.'
6.7 The Vancouver CommunityNet.
The Vancouver region is the prime economic area of British Columbia, and is located in the southwest corner of the province. The 1993 population for Vancouver itself was 490,000 and the 1991 population of the entire Lower Mainland of Vancouver was 1.7 million. (Canadian Almanac and Directory, 1996.) Municipalities in the Lower Mainland include Vancouver, Burnaby, North Vancouver, West Vancouver, New Westminster, Surrey, Langley, Richmond, Delta, Port Coquitlam, Port Moody, Coquitlam and White Rock.
6.7.1 Historical background to the community network.
The Vancouver CommunityNet, (VCN) {16} formerly the Vancouver Regional FreeNet, was formed in 1993, following the well-publicized successes of Ottawa and Victoria. According to interview respondents, the CommunityNet was characterized early on by overtly political goals and directions. Some of these directions stemmed from quite divisive debates in the earliest days between those interested in more political aspects of the community network and those wanting to take a somewhat more corporate approach. One respondent commented that "anything that had the slightest tinge of commercial value was frowned upon and met with outright hostility," and attributed much of this divisive tension to the commercial content question.
In the end, many of the key early organizers of the system were activists, and for them a critical aspect of community networks was that of democratic communication. They were thus interested in grassroots volunteer participation rather than more institutional approaches to organization building. Additionally, several key participants, including founding president Brian Campbell, came from a background in public libraries. Campbell, director of technology for the Vancouver Public Library, was particularly interested in questions of access to information by the general public.
Figure VII - Vancouver CommunityNet logo.
One consequence of this grassroots orientation was that the VCN was not supported by large institutions to the same degree as other large community networks. Ottawa's NCF, for example, was essentially built and housed by Carleton University's computing facilities. Halifax's Chebucto community network was similarly supported by Dalhousie University. The first large community network in Cleveland was built and housed by Case Western Reserve University.
Vancouver's CommunityNet did not initially receive significant technical support from any large institutions. Most of the public libraries did not have enough of a computing infrastructure at the time to support a community network. Neither of the region's large public universities - the University of British Columbia (UBC) and Simon Fraser University (SFU) - were interested in officially supporting the community network, and a similar resistance was encountered from the area's small community colleges, although it should be noted that most of the community colleges had very modest computing facilities at the time. Additionally, no individuals with enough influence to champion official support from such organizations were volunteers with the CommunityNet.
This posed a major problem for the nascent organization. The costs and overhead involved in maintaining a community network can be significant, and the technical expertise required can be hard to find. Difficulty in obtaining such support undoubtedly was a major contribution to the delays in the VCN's startup phase. At least one respondent offered the opinion that the organization's intense focus on promoting grassroots participation may have contributed to this problem by creating an atmosphere in which institutional support was discouraged. All large successful community networks have enjoyed such institutional support at some point.
Despite the lack of formalized technical support from a major institution, by early 1994 volunteers employed by UBC's computing services facility had a test system running, and a small UNIX workstation - a Sun IPX - was received as a donation from Sun Microsystems in the US. {17} The community net was also able to maintain a small office at sfu's Harbour Centre campus for a brief period.
At this time the controversial decision was made to purchase a licence for CWRU's FreePort software and use it as the basis for the network's menu system. It was controversial because the tremendous limitations in FreePort's simple BBS-style interface were already apparent. FreePort supports nothing more than simple text-only (character based) menus which allow the user to choose options by typing in numbers. However the technical volunteers felt at the time that acquiring FreePort would require less work than building up a system based on other UNIX software, such as Lynx (a text-only World Wide Web client) or Gopher.
In mid 1994 the VCN acquired office space in the 411 Dunsmuir Senior Citizens' Centre in downtown Vancouver. Several VCN volunteers, including then vice-president (now president) Margaret Coates, were involved with organizations housed at 411, which considered helping get older people online part of its educational mandate. Both the 411 Seniors Society and NAOC, the National Academy of Older Canadians, have been involved with CommunityNet educational ventures in this area. An agreement was reached with UBC to house the main server, which lent the system some stability. The CommunityNet was also able to hire some staff through generous grants from the Vancouver Foundation, a local charitable foundation, VanCity, the city's largest credit union, and a number of government make-work schemes. The entire system, which had been in testing for some time, was officially launched in September of 1994.
Unfortunately, telephone costs on the UBC campus were extremely high, running close to $100 per line per month. In an attempt to reduce line charges for its data dialup pool the VCN moved its modem facilities downtown, to the basement of the 411 Seniors Centre, and used the Vancouver Public Library's (VPL) Centrex phone switch. This reduced monthly line charges to approximately $30 per line per month, and was possible thanks to the cooperation of the library, located only a few blocks from 411. The unusual arrangement - modems in one location and the main server in another - necessitated a leased 56 Kbps (56K) line between downtown Vancouver and the UBC campus, as shown below.
Figure VIII - Vancouver CommunityNet network configuration, ca. 1995.
Ironically, the cost savings of this arrangement were almost immediately eliminated. BCTel announced in early 1995 that for complex technical reasons {18} and CRTC regulations, Centrex switches would no longer be allowed to support modem (ie.: non-voice) traffic. All Internet service providers, and the VCN was included in this category, were invited to "upgrade" to BCTel's considerably more expensive all-digital service instead.
This presented a tremendous problem for the VCN. Not only were telephone rates returning to roughly the same levels as they had been at UBC, but the costly investment in the hardware required to support the 56K line was also undermined. It was also becoming clear that the 56K line itself could not handle the demands placed on it by both the regular dialup users and volunteers working in the VCN office. Users were complaining of intolerable lag - lengthy delays between keystrokes - caused by the 56K line bottleneck, and the VCN began casting around for an affordable solution.
It took some time to find a reasonable answer. In the meantime the VCN upgraded its server by acquiring a second UNIX workstation. This machine, a Sun Sparc 20, was bought largely from donated funds and marked a significant step up in system capacity. It was brought online by September 1995, in time for the VCN's annual general meeting. The CommunityNet also converted its community information base from the old FreePort text-only format to HTML, for use with the World Wide Web, at the same time.
After lengthy negotiations with VPL, a solution for the server siting problem was reached early in 1996. The VPL had recently moved to a new building located two blocks from the VCN office. As part of its high-technology wired infrastructure, the library had received the donation of a high-speed Internet connection through BCTel. The library agreed to house the VCN server and modem hardware in one of its machine rooms, and permit the VCN access to its Internet connection. By June of 1996 the move was complete, eliminating the frustrating 56K bottleneck. The VCN also added more dialup telephone lines, bringing the total of public lines to 33.
6.7.2 Charitable Status.
One of the ongoing battles that the VCN has been fighting for some time involves charitable tax status with Revenue Canada. Community networks have been systematically denied charitable tax status by the government since Victoria first applied in 1993. In part this involves community networks having constitutions ill-suited to satisfying Revenue Canada's strict definitions for charitable status, but it is also because community networks, being wholly new phenomena, do not have any precedent in case law. {20} This is disappointing for community networks, because it means that funds given to their organizations cannot be claimed by donors as charitable donations. In addition there is a certain aura of legitimacy associated with charitable tax status that many organizations consider desirable.
The Vancouver CommunityNet, through the West Coast Environmental Law Foundation, {21} fought this case through the courts. On July 8 1996 they met with success, when the Federal Court of Appeal issued a 2:1 ruling in their favour. (Whyte, 1996.) The ruling was quite clear, with Justice J. K. Hugessen stating that "there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that the provision of free access to information and to a means by which citizens can communicate with one another on whatever subject they may please is a type of purpose similar to those which have been held to be charitable (in the past.)" (Hugessen, 1996.) At time of writing it was unknown whether Revenue Canada would appeal this ruling.
By mid 1996 the CommunityNet had nearly completed its transition from the old FreePort menu system to a purely Web-based one, using the text-only Web browser Lynx. It also had nearly 9000 registered users.
6.8 The Victoria Telecommunity Network.
Victoria, located at the southeast tip of Vancouver Island, is the provincial capital of British Columbia. Victoria's 1991 population was 71,000, and the 1991 population for the Victoria area was approximately 278,000. (British Columbia regional index, 1995, p. 12.)
6.8.1 Historical background to the community network.
The Victoria Free-Net, (the original name of the Victoria Telecommunity Network) the first community network to come online in Canada, had its origins in May 1992. Gareth Shearman, a Victoria-based educational consultant, and a number of other people inspired by the Cleveland Free-Net, held a public meeting to measure local interest in bringing such a system to the BC capital. Over two dozen people agreed to participate, and the Victoria Free-Net Association (VIFA) held its first meeting in June.
Within a rapid five month period they had achieved the first part of their goal by bringing a SparcStation 2 workstation donated by Sun Microsystems online, sharing Camosun College's slender 9600 bps Internet connection. Unfortunately because of funding constraints they were only able to provide a single modem number for data dialup, severely restricting the service's utility to the Victoria public. However within a few months, and with the support of BCTel, {22} they were able to expand their dialup pool.
Figure IX - Victoria Telecommunity Network logo.
Victoria was affiliated from its earliest days with the US NTPN and also used the same software created for the Cleveland Free-Net-the FreePort UNIX software developed and distributed by Case Western Reserve University.
The system soon became extremely popular, particularly since it was the first of its kind in the country. Shearman, by then president of the Association, spent a good deal of time travelling around British Columbia, promoting community networks wherever he went. Many community networks, particularly those in smaller communities in the province, were started up after Shearman proposed to a local that he or she take up the cause.
Victoria itself continued to expand slowly. Unfortunately it suffered a major setback in late 1994 when its main hard drive failed cataclysmically. As the community network could not afford to maintain regular tape backups and also had no spare backup hardware, the entire system was out of commission for six weeks.
At around the same time Camosun College indicated that the Free-Net's consumption of Internet bandwidth was adversely affecting the College's operations. Camosun had upgraded its 9600 bps connection to a 56K line, but it was still being saturated by Free-Net traffic. VIFA temporarily obtained a network feed through the government-owned BC Systems Corporation, then moved in March of 1995 to space owned by a local firm, Softwords Research International, using an Internet feed provided by Pacific Interconnect.
The community network maintains a network of public access sites through the local public library system. In fact most public libraries in the lower Island now have some form of access to VIFA.
On the hardware side VIFA acquired an old Sun IPX workstation and expanded its telephone lines to 40 public lines. Unfortunately the load on its main server, the ageing Sparc 2, is ever-increasing and causing noticeable system delays. VIFA is thus planning on purchasing a new Sparc 20 or equivalent workstation when it has the funds to do so. On the software side VIFA is planning on replacing the original FreePort bulletin-board style software with a somewhat more modern system based on the Chebucto Suite developed in Halifax.
Despite its early connections to the US NTPN, Victoria decided at its 1995 annual general meeting to change its service name to the Victoria Telecommunity Network, partly out of concerns that the NTPN would be applying legal pressure to make Canadian community networks conform with its naming requirements, and partly out of the concern that the name 'Free-Net' misleads people into thinking that the service is free to run. However the name of its organization remains the Victoria Free-Net Association.
At the time of writing the Victoria Telecommunity Network has over 16,000 registered users and is thus the largest community network in the province.