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B4RN is not an isolated movement. Community-supported internets are being constructed in rural areas of the United States too, in places the country's telecom behemoths have all but ignored. Take the Central Illinois Regional Broadband Network (CIRBN), which has already installed 103 miles of fiber optic cables thanks to an $18 million federal grant combined with state and private funds. The idea is to create a backbone in the suburban Bloomington-Normal area, and then branch out to surrounding rural communities.
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