The charter comes first
Every LoTek network adopts a written charter before it switches on. The charter is what makes a network the residents’ own rather than a project someone runs for them, and it is what keeps the network going when the people who built it move on.
Lister Flats wrote the first one in 2009. Every network since has started from a version of it, and the template below collects what seventeen years of networks have learned.
What every charter includes
- Purpose: to provide an affordable, reliable connection owned and governed by the households it serves.
- Membership: one household, one vote. Every connected household is a member, whether or not it contributes to the maintenance fund.
- Stewards: how many, what they do, how they are elected and for how long. Most networks elect five to seven stewards for staggered two-year terms.
- Assemblies: a monthly open meeting and an annual assembly with a quorum, usually five percent of members.
- The maintenance fund: a suggested contribution, how the fund is spent, and the rule that no household is disconnected for not paying.
- Transparency: books published to members every quarter, and the network’s monitoring public on this site.
- Privacy: the network does not inspect, log, sell or share members’ traffic, and says so in writing.
- Dissolution: if the network ever winds up, its equipment and funds pass to a neighboring community network, never to a private owner.
- Amendment: how the charter itself can be changed, usually by two thirds of an annual assembly.
Stewards
Stewards are volunteers elected by the members. A typical slate is a network steward or two who look after the equipment, a treasurer, a membership steward, a training steward and a rooftops steward who keeps the agreements. Stewards are named on this site by first name and initial only.
Networks fail when the two people who understand them move away. Charters should require every steward to train a successor, and assemblies should elect at least one new steward every year.
Money
There are no subscription fees and no data caps. Households give what they can to a maintenance fund, usually a suggested three to ten dollars a month, and the fund pays for replacement hardware, insurance, power and backhaul. A fund should hold enough for one large repair, such as a hub replacement, at all times. The stewardship playbook covers budgeting.
Legal home
A charter needs an organization to belong to. Most LoTek networks incorporate as a cooperative or a nonprofit; some begin under a tenants’ association or a community land trust and incorporate later. The legal basics playbook explains the choices.