Broadband-capable community networks
Guifi.net
Catalan community-owned telecom commons with its own wireless and fibre infrastructure
Carries internet traffic active
The foundation is active, but we could not reach any live statistics page, so current network health is only partly verified.
Updated 29 Oct 2026
| Internet traffic | Yes. The foundation has been a registered operator since April 2009 and peers with upstream networks via the CATNIX exchange. |
|---|---|
| Node count | ~37,000 nodes (December 2021 figure; no live stats published) (as of 1 Dec 2021, source) |
| Geography | Mainly Catalonia and the Valencian Community, with some nodes elsewhere in Spain. Established in 2004. |
| Regions | Catalonia, Spain, Valencian Community, Spain |
| Tech |
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| Typical cost | Participants buy and run their own equipment. Member associations and companies sell access at reduced rates. We found no flat joining fee. |
| Bandwidth | Varies from Wi-Fi links to fibre. No figures were available in our sources. |
| Legal | Licence-free radio bands plus Spanish operator registration for the foundation. Infrastructure is shared under the Wireless Commons License. |
| Governance | Fundació Guifi.net (based in Gurb, Catalonia) with three service areas: Xarxa de Comuns, Treball en Xarxa and a legal service. Run on a social-economy model with a commons licence. |
| UK notes | Catalan network; our research found no UK presence. |
| Links |
How it works
Guifi.net is a Catalan community-owned telecom commons. Participants build and own their own infrastructure under an open licence, and the network is the sum of those contributions. The licence is described on Wikipedia as the Wireless Commons License. The project was established in 2004.
The network mixes wireless point-to-point and sector links with fibre. Fibre from the farms began in 2009 in Gurb. The network has been connected to the CATNIX internet exchange since 2011, and the foundation has been a registered operator since April 2009. Upstream peering with larger networks is how traffic reaches the wider internet.
Fundació Guifi.net, based in Gurb in Catalonia, looks after three service areas: Xarxa de Comuns, Treball en Xarxa, and a legal service. The foundation describes its model as social economy.
How to join
We could not verify a current step-by-step process. Guifi's older sites and statistics pages returned errors or access-denied pages when we tried them, and the join and map URLs are not confirmed. What we can say:
- Start from the landing page. It is in Catalan with an English version.
- Contact the foundation at [email protected], the address given there.
- Expect to buy your own equipment. Participants provide their own gear, and member associations and companies sell access at reduced rates. We found no flat joining fee.
What it realistically gives you
It does carry ordinary internet traffic. It is an operator-style network with peering, not only a hobby mesh. Bandwidth varies from Wi-Fi links to fibre and we found no figures.
The node count is old. Wikipedia reports more than 37,000 active nodes and about 71,000 km of links as of December 2021. A 2015 paper gave more than 27,000 operational nodes. We found no 2026 figure and no live statistics endpoint, so the number on this site is labelled as a December 2021 figure. It probably counts registered nodes, not nodes verified as working today.
Caveats
- Geography is mainly Catalonia and the Valencian Community, with some nodes elsewhere in Spain.
- Current health is only partly verified. The foundation is active, but we could not read live statistics.
- Routing details are not confirmed on any page we fetched. A 2014 report describes BGP on a supernode backbone with mesh clouds below it, but that is old and we have not relied on it.
- Our research found no UK presence.