You have said recently that access into those public technologies are less of an issue now. It's been played out and it's been resolved in lots of cases such as pirate TV, such as the example you gave with Backspace, but you've said that the issue now is access to networks, to distribution or just to network technology.
What do you mean here? What type of networks are you talking about, and how can people have access to these networks?

The thing about the public network, the Internet, is that its means are determined by the commercial interests that own the cable between the main parts of the network, i.e. between countries, between cities, that's the sort of telecom-owned infrastructure which serves a purpose, and obviously they're at liberty to make a judge based on the cost that they have to meet.

But clearly those network structures don't benefit the broader public unless they're accessible, and the access to cost-effective or free bandwidth is something that still stands in the way of all of this production meeting a potential market. It either has to satisfy some sort of commercial requirement, in other words be trendy or be glossy or be dead original, or be funded in some way or another.
And there's a really strong argument for finding an alternative pathway between people, and that's part of what we explored early on in real practical terms in the local area in Clink Street where we used a bit of radio, really early wireless LAN technology to bridge across between Winchester Wharf and Soho Wharf, the building opposite. So we basically threw a cable over the street, although you're not really allowed to do that, so with a little bit of extra, it did actually cost a bit of money but we put a wires link across the building, and then that building was able to extend that connectivity throughout that structure.

What's possible now is to actually take up some of the newer versions of that tech which are considerably cheaper, and put in place an embryonic mesh network which hopefully will interlink willing parties right across cities or across any environment, urban or rural where distances can be bridged. And that's really down to the limits of the legal permissions with some of this wireless technology.
But by no means is it limited to utilising the very new wireless offerings. It's still possible to apply the same idea of a consciousness of the person you're actually connecting with. I think that's as much part of what Consume's about as anything else.

So Consume is this independent wireless network?

Yeah. Well, consume.net or consumethenet is a sort of aspiration that we have to I guess propagate an idea, a notion of sharing of resources in a publicly spirited way, but really to resolve local requirement for shared connection, for interconnection. And that might mean ultimately you get a decent chance at... An Internet connection is something that one can use to get on to the wider Internet, but it might mean locally that you're able to carry quite considerable video content, quite heavyweight content within a local area.

So local TV and local radio becomes all very much more promising and possible within the realm of an autonomous network system: one where you haven't got the overhead that you normally associate with, well, let's face it, even ADSL is prohibitively costly for most people, and that's not nearly enough to build a backbone network or a network that can be shared among lots of people.

But there are also usually constraints about how you can use that network, what's technically possible.

Oh, within the commercial offerings?

Consume seems not to have those kind of formal constraints.

No, well I think the constraints there are constraints within the technology, but they're on a much higher physical level than those that are imposed by the ADSL and the ISDNs and the more domestic offerings on the connectivity side, on the bandwidth side of things from ISPs and whatnot.

The interesting thing about approach to wireless technologies is you can apply your own solution to whatever that conduit is, so if it is the electrical system of your house and you've worked out a way of passing the IP packets up it then that's as appropriate bit of network as you shouting to your neighbour the latest scores from the football! If that's the extent of information you need to know then you might as well shout it!

But you may not know unless you're connected in some other way that you otherwise don't have to pay for, or there's more cost effective. And we're talking about one-off low cost infrastructure as opposed to expensive in-store and ongoing drain on your resources for something that you're not even sure how much you're going to use.

But Consume isn't run for profit.

No, and this goes back to this autonomy thing where the idea is that if you have an interest then you negotiate with the neighbour to share traffic and interconnection.
So I think what we try to make implicit is that's done without any money changing hands, and the positive value would be the information that's carried across the network. And that is the equity or the value of the activity of sharing.