Althea, a system that enables communities to build and maintain their own decentralized internet infrastructure, today launched an Altheahood community in Hilltop. Neighbors can join together to receive cheaper, faster internet service and/or to become relays to earn money. Althea organizers are seeking 100 pre-registrations to begin deployment.

The Altheahood program was driven by organizers in Hilltop seeking an accessible, high-speed, secure internet service. Traditionally, residents in the area have only had a few choices for internet service that resulted in slow speeds and a lack of flexible options based on consumer’s varying needs.

“The cost of Internet services has been a huge obstacle for residents in Hilltop, but Althea organizers are joining together to bring neighbors and businesses more affordable options,” said Deborah Simpier, Co-Founder of Althea (www.althea.org). “We look forward to building a community-owned internet co-op with faster, but cheaper internet service and helping other neighborhoods collaborate too.”

To get started, an Altheahood community is selected by an organizer as a potential deployment. Local organizers then work together with the Althea team to pre-register people prior to committing to a buildout.

For Althea participants, local organizers will install and configure hardware, provide ongoing support and help generate revenue streams with internet equipment. Local businesses and consumers can set up a router to receive internet service and then earn money by selling bandwidth to other users. The goal of the Altheahood program is to help all neighborhoods increase their bandwidth for better information exchange as well as education opportunities.

Althea’s technology enables routers to pay each other for bandwidth, making it easy for communities to set up networks which offer a better service than existing internet service provider monopolies. Similar to the Airbnb model, users can both receive the service and make money by becoming a ‘relay’ and providing it to their neighbors.

For more about Althea, please visit the following video link. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cq4mWTQZmnI

– Althea