ICR doctoral student, Sascha Meinrath, quoted in the New York Times on community wireless projects

January 19, 2006
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In an article entitled "Advocates of Wi-Fi in Cities Learn Art of Politics," journalist Glenn Fleishmann points to a summit held by the Champaign-Urbana Community Wireless Network as turning point when community wireless projects incorporated political build-outs, as well as network build-outs, to their agendas.

Unfortunately, in the effort to increase internet access through wireless technologies the social challenges to community wireless may outweigh the technological challenges. Meinrath, a coordinator of the Champaign-Urbana Community Wireless Network of CUWiN, is quoted as saying "We could develop all of these technologies, we could come up with the holy grail of wireless technologies, and then it would be illegal to deploy it."

This past year the CUWiN Project received a $50,000 grant from Threshold Foundation. CUWiN also received a $120,000 grant from the Open Society Institute to build our partnership with the South African-based Council for Scientific and Industrial Research.

In 2005 Meinrath made presentations at the Muniwireless Conference in San Francisco, the Rural Broadband Conference in Springfield, and Grantmakers in the Arts Conference in Los Angeles, among others. He was elected to the Board of Directors for CTCnet, helped coordinate the Low-Power FM Radio and Community Wireless Barnraising Gathering here in Urbana, and am the Summit Director for the upcoming National Summit for Community Wireless Networks.