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INTRODUCTION The proverb “all roads were supposed to lead to Rome” is now changed to “information is the highway” and leads Rome right to our home. In today’s world, anyone can travel to Rome virtually through its internet-enabled handheld device, but how many of them understand the power of the internet? Globally, there are around 5.5 billion people online in 2024, an increase of 227 million individuals based on revised estimates for 2023, according to a 2024 study by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU).2 This means that 32% of the world’s population is unconnected. The existing and ongoing digital exclusion denies an entire generation the opportunity to develop their potential and uplift their communities. Bringing internet access to unconnected populations to bridge both the urban and rural digital divide remains a major challenge for development practitioners and policymakers.3 There are many reasons, such as poverty, unreliable service, lack of linguistically and culturally relevant content, lack of equipment and training, and lack of network infrastructure. The inequality in internet access is further exposed by the COVID pandemic, along with the lack of information availability worldwide. Equitable access to public services, such as health care and education, as well as to information, cannot be ensured without equitable broadband access. Most importantly, maintaining privacy and preserving the cultural ethics of locals is challenging for policy makers and development practitioners. Conventional commercial telecommunication networks can provide access to internet services; however, they often fail to address broader challenges such as promoting digital literacy among local communities, preserving cultural values, and supporting locally relevant culture and content. One-way communities are overcoming network access barriers by building their own networks. A community network is an architecture built and operated by the people themselves, offering a collaborative approach that enables them to manage their own services, create local content, and operate their network independently. Community networks are considered rural infrastructure that helps in bridging the digital divide and information access barriers in underserved regions of Global South countries. By definition, community networks are crowdsourced networks primarily developed and maintained by citizens or non-profit organizations.4 These networks are decentralized and autonomous networks. They play a key role in either augmenting existing or creating new internet and connectivity services where they are either not available or scarcely available.5 These community networks are established at community-owned spaces primarily managed by local organizations or local leaders. These spaces are used for setting up the local server, uploading and managing the content, functioning as metropolitan intranets, and enabling communities to access and benefit from digital services. 2 ITU Press Release, Global Internet use continues to rise, but disparities remain, especially in low-income regions. 3 USAID and the Digital Impact Alliance (2017) Closing the access gap: Innovation to accelerate universal Internet adoption. 4 P. Micholia et al., "Community Networks and Sustainability: A Survey of Perceptions, Practices, and Proposed Solutions," in IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials, vol. 20, no. 4, pp. 3581-3606, Fourth quarter 2018, doi: 10.1109/COMST.2018.2817686. 5 Upasana, Community networks: states, solutions and communities.

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