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gewg_ writes:

The Local Germany reports:

Shunned by government and big telecom companies, [Sollwitt, a village of 123 homes] in rural northwest Germany is set to expand the super-fast internet network they built to a second village.

[...]The project is the latest effort of Burgerbreitbandnetz, the Citizen's Broadband Internet Company, a small group of locals who took it upon themselves to build a super high-speed internet network in the village of Lowenstedt when Germany's major telecommunications companies turned them away. The group hopes to connect 59 villages in the county by 2021.

"Their answer was no," said Ute-Gabriel Boucsein, head of the village internet startup. "They say the region where we live [in Schleswig-Holstein] is too far away and there aren't enough people."

For the big telecom companies, that meant there wasn't enough money to be made. But for the villagers, it was a matter of survival.

"In 2010, the villages had problems selling land," said Boucsein. "People want to buy, but they ask how fast, how good the internet is and when it's not so good the people don't buy." Not only do new people not move in, but the young people leave, says dairy farmer Holger Jensen. "Then, when the older people start to die, the village shrinks."

[...]For €999, villagers could become shareholders in the company and provide the money needed to get financing to build the fibre-optic infrastructure. The Burgerbreitbandnetz team needs 68 percent of households in the village to sign up. As of this afternoon the company had signed up 72 percent of the homes in Sollwitt.