Argentina Travel Report

###### tags: `reports`,` apc`, `en-us` # Argentina Travel Report APPENDIX D – TRAVEL EXCHANGE REPORT (REPORTING TEMPLATE) COMMUNITY NETWORKS LEARNING GRANT Association for Progressive Communications ARGENTINA TRAVEL EXCHANGE REPORT SUBMISSION DATE OF REPORT: 2019 December 31th AUTHOR: Giudice Jésica, Santiago Piccinini, Thiago Paixao, William Suárez *Travel Exchange to which community network: Argentina – AlterMundi - QuintanaLibre ## *Who was involved: - the traveller(s) Thiago Paixao (IBE Brasil) William Suárez (Colnodo) Karla Prudencio Ruiz (Redes AC) - the host(s) Jésica Giudice (AlterMundi) ## *Date / When is it happening? July 05th – July 10th ## *Where is it happening? José de la Quintana, Córdoba, Argentina ## *Purpose and description of the travel exchange: _ **Participation in CLT to:** Participate in the Latin America Telecommunication Congress - Congreso Latinoamericano de Telecomunicaciones 2019 (CLT2019) _Understand how the market and governments are working on emerging telecommunications issues. _Gain strategic contacts with government representatives in Latin America for access to universal funds and LibreRouter approval. _ **Visit Quintana Libre to:** Visit QuintanaLibre, meeting some of the members _To know the processes and local contexts of social organization of the community network maintained by Altermundi. _To know the technical solutions developed by the community and Altermundi in the community. _Cultural exchange. _ **Visit Altermundi headquarters to:** Explore, learn about, write about LibreRouter/LibreMesh and strengthen the relationship between our organizations _To make exchange of technical knowledge around the LibreRouter project. _To know the history of the collective and its technical solutions. _Participation in the feminist activities ## *What was lessons learned from this travel exchange which can be shared with the global community network group? _ **Participation in CLT:** _ We note the great lack of knowledge by governments about the community network model as a solution for universal access. To reverse this scenario, we believe in the need for greater incidence in events such as CLT. _ **Visit to Quintana Libre and Altermundi headquarters:** _ Low-cost technical solutions for equipment reuse, such as the use of handcrafted metal plates to transform radios with Omini antennas into Sectoral or Directional antennas. _Making agreements with universities to donate Internet surplus for community use. _Good practices of monthly meetings with the network users, for reports and training. _Good practices of only joining new users to the network, through the participation of monthly meetings and a mini training course. ## *What was lessons learned from this travel exchange which can be shared with the public? _ **Participation in CLT:** _The impact and change of paradigms that 5G will cause in the global telecommunications market. _The major concern of telecommunication companies and governments with security and cyber attacks in the coming years. _That market business models, disguised as economic policies, are created in cooperation between companies and governments as a solution to connect the disconnected, but that do not enable social and nonprofit models, such as Community Networks. _ **Visit to Quintana Libre and Altermundi headquarters:** _Version of sexist Mexican song resignified with feminist values and non-toxic masculinity, created from a collective exercise proposed by Jessica (Altermundi). ## *Any overall reflections of the travel exchange? _ **Participation in CLT for:** _ There is a great need for social organizations that work with Community Networks to occupy spaces such as CLT to give visibility to the Community Networks model as a viable, lower cost and sustainable alternative to access universalization and the creation of telecommunications infrastructure. As the lobby of the Big companies are huge and if nothing is done, probably, they will use all or most of the available funds. _ **Visit to Quintana Libre and Altermundi headquarters:** _The LibreRouter as a promising project to guarantee technological autonomy of community networks around the world. It is also possible to identify as a great potential for income generation and economic sustainability of the collectives, when they appropriate the technology and start producing productive arrangements, such as cooperatives and small social enterprises, for the manufacture of the equipment. ## *Can any of the material be recommended towards use of learning inputs for a community network teaching syllabus? If so, what is it? _LibreRouter Manual produced by Thiago (IBEBrasil) with the collaboration of Nico (APC) and Willian (Colnodo): PT-BR: https://hackmd.io/@ibe-brasil/S13MJmmrr EN-US: (more complete): https://hackmd.io/@ibe-brasil/H1-vMNnkL _Videos and Photos: https://share2.apc.org/index.php/s/Co6EG6rjiEYiwYA?path=%2FPHOTOS%2FArgentina%2FIBEBrasil