said by silbaco:So pool money together and start a cooperative.
Building a network takes a lot more money than people are going to have on hand to throw into a pool.
However, starting a nonprofit organization that would seek loans to build it and then operate it on a nonprofit basis could work. They'd just need to charge enough to repay the loans, cover operating costs, and maintain a fund for needed repairs and upgrades. The only issue is that you can't start out too small, since you have to spread your costs over a large enough area to get enough subs so that you can charge them a competitive price.
I think the best place to try something like this would be in an area where you have lots of highly-paid tech-literate residents and crappy broadband service. Huntsville, Alabama comes to mind, although I don't know how good their broadband options are up there. For telco, they have AT&T, and, for cable, I believe they have Comcast and maybe some overbuild from Knology.
