Snip from a story I filed today for Wired News:
During calmer times, the ad-hoc culture of open-source wireless, mesh networking and free municipal Wi-Fi is often seen as outside of the industry mainstream.
But those alternative approaches are perfect in crises where conventional infrastructure is damaged, said Sascha Meinrath of the Champaign-Urbana Community Wireless Network.
Last week, CUWireless launched the "Katrina Community Wireless Rapid Response" project to funnel grass-roots offers toward areas in need.
"We have a breakdown in many of the things that people rely on to deploy these systems, and then we have people whose expertise is in rubber-banding and bubble-gum-sticking and pulling together things with whatever's at hand," Meinrath told Wired News. "That's very much what we need right now — people with that level of improvisation and expertise."
Hurricane Katrina wiped out communications systems throughout the Gulf states, and much of the impacted region remains cut off from voice and data service. But some connectivity is coming back from unexpected sources, thanks in part to tech industry volunteers who've teamed up with the Federal Communications Commission.
