![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.internetsociety.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/Panama-CN.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Another early consideration is funding. \u201cCommercial Internet service providers always look for areas where they can profit more. But in this area, they don’t see a return on their investments,\u201d explained Julio. Chapter members Rachel Vazquez and Pablo Ruidiaz were able to secure funding for the project through a Beyond the Net (BtN) grant<\/a> from the Internet Society Foundation. BtN grants are given exclusively to Internet Society chapters to support innovative connectivity projects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Although no one expected the process to be easy, nothing prepared them for the number of hurdles\u2014bureaucratic, technical, geographic\u2014they would have to jump over to meet their goal. <\/p>\n\n\n\n First off: close doesn\u2019t mean easy-to-reach. Parar\u00e1 Puru sits on federally protected land, along the Chagres River. The community\u2019s main source of income is tourism, which requires communication with vendors and visitors. But in order to make a phone call or send an email, they had to take a boat to the mainland then travel by bus to reach a signal. Which is a tough way to run a business.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWhen the river is low, you have to get out at some points to push the boat past the shingles. Conversely, when the river is flowing too strongly, you spend an hour fighting the current to go upstream. So the boat ride alone can vary from 15 minutes to an hour,\u201d said Russell Bean, another chapter member who helped build the community network and has since joined the Internet Society as a full time Internet exchange point development expert. Throw in Panama City\u2019s famously congested commuter traffic, and it can take anything from 40 minutes to over two hours from Panama City to Parar\u00e1 Puru.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In Panama, any network that charges fees for service is considered an Internet provider. And in order to be an Internet provider, you have to have a license to operate. It\u2019s one thing for a telecommunications company to get a license, but for a village with under 100 inhabitants, it\u2019s just about impossible. Thankfully, the government made an exception for Parar\u00e1 Puru, but the rule is still in the books. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Originally, when the Panama Chapter surveyed the topography of the village, the best network design option was … complicated: erect a long-range antenna on top of a hill and connect to the only man-made structure in visible range, a cement factory. Next, lay down fiber to connect to the neighboring village. \u201cThe one available path for fiber was a mud track, not even a real path. We think<\/em> it would have been possible,\u201d said Russell.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the end, they didn\u2019t need to test their hypothesis about the mud path, because a new low earth orbit satellite service became available and changed everything. \u201cIt went from being a very difficult, technical project with huge costs and a 20-meter tower to a four-meter pole and some solar panels.\u201d If they were starting from scratch, Russell would skip the complicated surveying altogether.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cOne of the first [benefits identified by the leaders] is that with the Internet access, they could communicate instantaneously with the tourism agencies that bring visitors to the village, where they live,\u201d said Julio. \u201cIt allowed them direct communication with the hotel and the ability to monitor visits.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n The Parar\u00e1 Puru community network set the bar for what community connectivity in Panama can and should look like. \u201cIt\u2019s been so successful some politicians are now taking credit for it,\u201d said Russell. Now the Internet Society Panama Chapter and the Ember\u00e1 people of Parar\u00e1 Puru are advocating for more connectivity for other Ember\u00e1 villages and Indigenous communities across Panama. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Russell\u2019s advice for anyone who wants to build a community network? \u201cDon\u2019t give up.\u201d In all, it took four years of diplomacy, regulatory and legal wrangling, surveying, engineering, logistics, and collaboration to make the community network a reality. \u201cThere were so many moments when we could have given up.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n The Internet Society Panama\u00a0Chapter had a plan. They would build the country\u2019s first community network and bring the Internet to one of the country\u2019s many Indigenous communities that were still offline.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1887,"featured_media":228351,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_uag_custom_page_level_css":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5693,90,32],"tags":[],"region_news_regions":[36],"content_category":[6085,6087],"ppma_author":[6018],"class_list":["post-228346","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-community","category-community-networks","category-internet-access","region_news_regions-latin-america-caribbean","content_category-blog-type","content_category-stories-type"],"acf":[],"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":["https:\/\/www.internetsociety.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/Embera-Community.jpg",1200,551,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.internetsociety.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/Embera-Community-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/www.internetsociety.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/Embera-Community-450x207.jpg",450,207,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/www.internetsociety.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/Embera-Community-768x353.jpg",768,353,true],"large":["https:\/\/www.internetsociety.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/Embera-Community-1024x470.jpg",1024,470,true],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/www.internetsociety.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/Embera-Community.jpg",1200,551,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/www.internetsociety.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/Embera-Community.jpg",1200,551,false],"post-thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.internetsociety.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/Embera-Community-250x115.jpg",250,115,true],"square":["https:\/\/www.internetsociety.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/Embera-Community-600x551.jpg",600,551,true],"gform-image-choice-sm":["https:\/\/www.internetsociety.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/Embera-Community.jpg",300,138,false],"gform-image-choice-md":["https:\/\/www.internetsociety.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/Embera-Community.jpg",400,184,false],"gform-image-choice-lg":["https:\/\/www.internetsociety.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/Embera-Community.jpg",600,276,false]},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"Eeva Moore","author_link":"https:\/\/www.internetsociety.org\/author\/moore\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"The Internet Society Panama\u00a0Chapter had a plan. They would build the country\u2019s first community network and bring the Internet to one of the country\u2019s many Indigenous communities that were still offline.\u00a0","authors":[{"term_id":6018,"user_id":1887,"is_guest":0,"slug":"moore","display_name":"Eeva Moore","avatar_url":{"url":"https:\/\/www.internetsociety.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/eeva-moore.jpeg","url2x":"https:\/\/www.internetsociety.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/eeva-moore.jpeg"},"author_category":"","last_name":"Moore","first_name":"Eeva","job_title":"","user_url":"","description":""}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.internetsociety.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228346","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.internetsociety.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.internetsociety.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.internetsociety.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1887"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.internetsociety.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=228346"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.internetsociety.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228346\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.internetsociety.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/228351"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.internetsociety.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=228346"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.internetsociety.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=228346"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.internetsociety.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=228346"},{"taxonomy":"region_news_regions","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.internetsociety.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/region_news_regions?post=228346"},{"taxonomy":"content_category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.internetsociety.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/content_category?post=228346"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.internetsociety.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=228346"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.internetsociety.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/Panama-CN-Plaque.jpg\")
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<\/figure>\n\n\n\nWant to learn more about the Internet in Panama? Check out the Internet Society Pulse country report. <\/a><\/h5>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"