25-MILE HORIZON · 24 MONTHS · $295 FIRST LINK · LOCAL FIRST
Network El Segundo publishes a cash-floor, two-year plan for a useful community mesh
Three consented rooftops, three directional paths, donated compute, and local-only sites establish the first honest mesh before internet transit enters the design.
Official PointCast Press Wire filing for Network El Segundo. This is an owned announcement, not independent reporting or paid client coverage.
EL SEGUNDO, Calif. — Mesh Commons translates NYC Mesh’s line-of-sight-first community model into a two-year El Segundo plan with a $295–$395 first-link floor, a redundant three-roof starting shape, and nine local-only services.
Network El Segundo has published Mesh Commons, a practical two-year plan for a community-owned local network centered in El Segundo. The least-expensive honest starting shape is three consented rooftops, three directional radio paths, one donated service computer, and local services that remain useful when an upstream internet gateway is unavailable.
The equipment floor for the first measured two-roof link is $295–$395. It assumes two $65-class outdoor radios, a small router, outdoor cable, surge and grounding allowances, a light mounting contingency, donated compute, volunteer labor, and legal roof access. The first redundant triangle is budgeted at $950–$1,500; the year-one hardware floor is $3,000–$5,000; and the 24-month floor is $9,500–$15,000 for 12–20 roofs and four to six hubs. Professional roof, electrical, engineering, permitting, insurance, tower-rent, unusual-mount, and internet-backhaul costs are excluded.
The workflow borrows directly from NYC Mesh’s public documentation: potential nodes enter a map, panoramic roof views establish line-of-sight candidates, equipment is purchased after viability, directional client radios connect into hubs, and mature clusters retain at least two uplinks. The governance direction also adopts the Network Commons freedoms to use the network, understand it, offer services, and extend it to others under the same conditions.
The first service cabinet includes hello.mesh, map.mesh, play.mesh, bbs.mesh, radio.mesh, library.mesh, drop.mesh, garden.mesh, and atelier.mesh. Local access has no mandatory monthly price; the plan suggests $5–$20 or volunteer time and excludes browsing-history, message-content, open-microphone, public-home-address, and location-history collection.
The 25-mile radius is a planning horizon for linked clusters, not a promise of blanket coverage. Any 15–25 mile proof link remains contingent on site permission, safe mounting, rooftop height, spectrum conditions, Fresnel clearance, and engineering review. Mesh Commons is a planning artifact, not an active physical mesh, internet service offering, emergency network, certified design, site survey, municipal program, or authorization to install.
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