Infrastructure Manifest (v. 1.0)—Allan Gomez, Devren Washington, Alex Wermer-Colan, and Grant Wythoff—Chapter 8—“Alternative Infrastructures for Digital Equity: Community-Based Internet Access”
Infrastructure Type Descriptiona

Control point for access to or useb

For example, identify the owner, regulator, manager, etc. as appropriate

Open Source, Open Access, or Public Resource/Utilityc Proprietaryc How heavily used?d Reliabilityd Satisfaction for Userd Ethical concerns (known or possible) Comments

Land infrastructure

For example, properties ceded, unceded, public, private, etc.

Include only principal land infrastructures.

  • For centuries, the land now known as Philadelphia was home to and cared for by native peoples, including the Lenni-Lenape People of Lenapehoking and the Poutaxat (Delaware Bay).
  • Within the city of Philadelphia, our activities primiarly operate in the zip codes of 19122, 19133, 19134.
  • Gardens of Las Parcelas, owned by Norris Square Neighborhood Project, and maintained by community members. Other gardens we collaborate with, like Cesar Andreú Iglesias Community Garden, are owned by the Philadelphia Land Bank, which gets more complicated.
  • Norris Square Park.
  • Jose Manuel Collazo Playground.
  • The city streets, sidewalks, and lamp posts, the in-between bits of infrastructure used by the city that we use and traverse.
  • Norris Square Park and Jose Manuel Collazo Playground are public parks.
  • Las Parcelas is accessible via its community of volunteer gardeners and maintainers.
  • Cesar Andreú Iglesias Community Garden has 24/7 open access and is maintained by community members.
Yes Yes 10 5 4 As Philadelphia Parks and Recreation states, “our modern systems of growing food and owning property are built on: the stolen land of Indigenous people; the enslavement of African people; the genocide of both Native and Black communities and cultures. These violent acts continue to impact Black and Indigenous communities today. We must understand and name these realities. We must acknowledge how they influence who has power over land and food in Philadelphia.”

Materials infrastructure

For example, notable common or rare extracted or other materials used in research, production, and communication.

Break down by notable materials used in devices or tools if appropriate.

PCW uses a wide array of hardware tools, networking and computing devices, and related accessories. For PCW’s network gear, most of our equipment is produced by Ubiquiti. We also use networking gear made by Mikrotik, TP Link, and others. PCW’s hardware list is available on our documentation page: https://docs.phillycommunitywireless.org/en/latest/installations/hardware/ Any hardware (routers, cables) or equipment (mounting poles) we install in an antenna host’s home or place of business becomes property of the building owner, and we consider it a donation. Not Applicable Yes 10 9 9

As far as we know, none of the hardware we use contains conflict minerals, but it is difficult to audit each device for all of the rare earth metals they contain. We try to acquire and deploy re-used tools wherever possible.

Complex “technical goods” such as networking equipment require industrial production with complex manufacturing/fabrication equipment. Additionally, many of the networking devices are manufactured abroad in China and Vietnam and must follow a long international supply chain before our use.

Although we use networking gear from several manufacturers, we primarily rely on equipment from Unifi; in many cases, we have to purchase more equipment from Unifi instead of being able to make more use of secondhand equipment from other manufacturers.

We buy a lot of materials from different vendors, and there’s not a lot of standardization in how those materials are shipped. One vendor shipped materials with wasteful styrofoam packaging peanuts, which led us to buy from a different vendor.

Energy infrastructure

For example, principal energy sources and infrastructure used in research, production, and communication

PECO, the major electric utility in Philadelphia, is the electricity supplier for NSNP, which houses our HQ. Prices have increased in last decade.

Some of our mesh nodes are fully solar-powered.

The energy used to power the vast majority of our devices comes from the properties whose costs for electricity are covered by the property owners, including residents and community organizations. Though our devices are continuously powered, we use very little electricity. We estimate roughly 25 to 50 dollars a year for the electrical costs at any building hosting antennas and WiFi devices.

PECO’s franchise utility service area is 2,100 square miles. Its parent company is Exelon, based in Chicago. Yes Yes 7 10 9 Over 60 percent of the energy generated for PECO customers come from coal and natural gas, which contributes to climate change. Only 7 percent comes from solar, wind, or hydropower. PECO customers need to opt in to a third party, CleanChoiceEnergy, in order to purchase grid power and renewable energy certificates.

Transportation infrastructure

For example, private or public transportation needed for daily or research trips

  • Cars for commute and for transporting staff and equipment to install sites and events.
  • Additional modes of commute include city bikes (including Indego Bike Sharing), SEPTA regional and commuter lines, and buses.
  • Staff and volunteers use personal cars and we are looking into a per diem gasoline / mileage reimbursement for those involved.
  • SEPTA is a publicly-owned, regional transportation authority operating in Philadelphia and four surrounding counties.
Yes Not Applicable 10 3 1 Philadelphia’s streets are incredibly dangerous, with car accidents and pedestrian deaths skyrocketing during the period of PCW’s founding and growth.

Architectural infrastructure

For example, buildings, labs, rooms

  • Basement HQ rented from Norris Square Neighborhood Project.
  • Temple University offers multiple buildings with mail rooms and staff who can handle shipments of equipment for PCW.
  • Rooftop of Gotham Tower, a residential apartment building, holds the sector antennas that beam wireless backhaul signal to all of our mesh WiFi hubs. Gotham Tower is one of many high sites PCW seeks out throughout our service area to relay and broadcast wifi signal into the community.
  • Buildings/residences of community members or organizations that we install at.
Not Applicable Yes 10 10 10

Civic, community, national, or regional infrastructure

For example, provided by cities, communities, governments, etc.

  • Funding provided by the City of Philadelphia’s Digital Literacy Alliance and Independence Public Media Foundation, a private foundation formed when WYBE Channel 35, formerly a public broadcaster operating in the Philadelphia market, “relinquished its broadcast license as part of the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) Broadcast Incentive Auction and received a one-time payment of $131.5 million.”
  • PCW has received additional grant funds from the Philadelphia City Fund, the Association for Aging and Retired Professionals, and the Technology and Learning Collaborative. PCW is always seeking out additional funders and donors.
Not Applicable Yes 10 10 10

Institutional infrastructure

For example, equipment, services, and “overhead” or “indirect cost recovery” items for grants to universities

  • Movement Alliance Project, our fiscal sponsor.
  • PhillyWisper is the ISP that provides wireless backhaul for our network, and offers labor and devices to support the network.
  • Pro-bono legal team at Dentons led by Todd Daubert.
Not Applicable Yes 10 10 10

Labor infrastructure

For example, type and amount of labor from collaborators, staff, research assistants; include any attributes that seem important, such as unrecognized, unpaid, low-paid, outsourced, or other attributes of labor

  • Five paid staff members (one full-time, four part-time) and fifty plus volunteers.
  • Members of Board of Advisors, Technology Advisory Board, and Neighborhood Advisory Board who volunteer their time to contribute to oversight and strategizing.
  • Antenna hosts who volunteer their time to coordinate and facilitate installations and maintenance work.
Antenna hosts, whether individuals or staff from community organizations, who grant access for installation and maintenance work. Not Applicable Yes 10 10 10

Research-content infrastructure

For example, physical libraries and archives, online research materials, shadow libraries, etc.

  • Institutional subscriptions to journals via Temple, Penn, and Princeton universities.
  • Occasional research projects conducted by graduate students and postdocs at Temple University and University of Pennsylvania.
  • PCW maintains a lending library in their HQ with over fifty books related to tech justice, media theory, the history of technology, and critical making.
Not Applicable Yes 5 10 10

Tools infrastructure

For example, principal analog tools and digital tools, scripts, or protocols used for research, writing, communication, production (excluding high-performance computing, for which see below)

Analog tools
  • Construction hardware
  • Networking equipment
Computers
  • Laptops, desktops (mostly refurbished or secondhand)
Operating System
  • Windows
  • Linux
  • MacOS
Principal software tools
  • Google Workspace
Project management tools
  • JIRA Project Management
Image and graphics editing/creation tools
  • Canva

PCW’s sofware list is available on our documentation page: https://docs.phillycommunitywireless.org/en/latest/organization/tools/.

PCW’s Lead Technician maintains an inventory and check-out list for PCW’s tools. Yes Yes 10 10 10

Networked Platforms infrastructure

For example, major networked or cloud platforms used for research, storage, analysis, sharing, communication, publication—Google Drive, Dropbox, AWS, etc. (excluding high-performance computing, for which see below)

  • Google Drive
  • Slack
  • PhillyWisper
  • Datacenter (Netrality) at 401 N Broad St.
  • Hosting Services
    • Hostifi
    • Linode
    • Github
    • ReadTheDocs
    • Netlify
    • Render
Not Applicable Yes 10 10 10
  • Cloud infrastructure has a real physical cost; the land the datacenter is built on, maintenance costs and resources (electricity, water/HVAC for cooling, etc.). Awareness around this issue has increased following the growth and development of compute-intensive, consumer-facing cryptocurrency and generative AI products/SaaS platforms.
  • Many platforms we use are owned/operated by MNCs that regularly commit ethical violations as well (Github owned by Microsoft who collaborates with the American military industrial/surveillance complex; Google Workspace owned/operated by Google)
Other infrastructure Not Applicable Not Applicable

This infrastructure manifest was completed by Allan Gomez, Devren Washington, Alex Wermer-Colan, and Grant Wythoff and reports on Chapter 8, “Alternative Infrastructures for Digital Equity: Community-Based Internet Access.”