NEWARK, Jun 5, 2026 — Residents of a neighborhood of 3,400 households last weekend switched on the sixty-fourth LoTek community network, after installing 140 rooftop nodes in two days. Like every LoTek network, it is owned by a residents’ cooperative and governed by stewards they elect.
More than 200 volunteers took part in the installation, many of them trained in LoTek’s monthly workshops over the previous six months. Households contribute a small monthly sum to a maintenance fund; there is no subscription fee and no data cap.
The network serves a neighborhood that had been told for years that upgraded commercial service was not economically viable. Within the first week, more than 2,100 households had connected.
“Nobody was coming to wire this neighborhood, so the neighborhood wired itself. That is the whole idea. It always has been.”
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