Athens Wireless Metropolitan Network - The Association

The Association

From the start of the project, care was taken by the non-profit AWMN association to build a wireless community network on a sound basis. The main purpose of the association is to promote two-way digital broadband telecommunication services to the public as a nonprofit activity, in collaboration with schools, local authorities, NGOs, independent regulatory authorities and other Community Wireless Networks in Greece.

The objectives of the project include the following:

• Creating, developing and maintaining a Wireless Community Network which will provide broadband services to its members.
• Developing technologies based on wireless and digital telecommunications.
• Educate the public on the use of wireless and digital communications
• Promote and encourage volunteerism and active participation.

The association has around 67 members (as of Aug, 2010). Not all members of the backbone network are members of the association, and there are around 900 that do not want to participate to the association, claiming as a cause the extent of moderation and speech censorship that is practiced in the association's forum, wiki and assembly. Participation in the association has, throughout its history, always been on a voluntary basis. No one is obliged to sign a peering agreement as long as it's not needed and no one has to join the Association to participate to the network rendering the AWMN network as one of the most open networks in the world. However all 1080 backbone node owners are obliged to accept responsibility for the smooth running of their node, follow the basic rules of the community and follow basic network neutrality rules.