When we talk about connecting the unconnected, the conversation almost always gravitates toward infrastructure: fiber rollouts, wireless coverage, spectrum allocation. These are, of course, essential. But there is a quieter, equally critical layer of the Internet that often goes unnoticed: the devices people actually use to connect.
Without affordable, functional, and repairable devices, connectivity remains theoretical.
At the recent Global Access to the Internet for All (GAIA) session during IETF 125, this gap took center stage.
Leandro Navarro (ISOC.CAT) presented a new Internet-Draft—draft-gaia-circular-device-practices—that clarifies how we think about meaningful connectivity. The draft is supported by the Internet Society Foundation and is the result of chapter members’ work. It contributes to a growing recognition: digital inclusion is not only about networks, but also about the lifecycle of devices.
The necessary ingredient of useful connectivity
In many underserved and rural communities, the barrier is not only access to networks and connectivity, but also access to (working, useful) devices to bring connectivity and turn it into meaningful, useful benefits for everyone.
Even when community networks are successfully deployed, their impact is limited if people cannot afford last-hop network devices, laptops, or smartphones, or if those devices fail and cannot be repaired locally. Connectivity without usable devices is like a road without available vehicles for everyone. Of course, these devices, like vehicles in road infrastructures, can be individual or collective, private or shared, and can also be used on a need basis.
This is where the draft introduces a crucial shift: from deploying infrastructure to sustaining access through circularity.
From linear consumption to circular systems
The Internet-Draft builds on years of hands-on experience from community-driven initiatives across Spain, Argentina, and Senegal, such as eReuse.org, EKOA (UNLP), Hahatay, and the WEEE plant by Tau. These initiatives have demonstrated that device ecosystems can be rethought as circular systems rather than linear supply chains, with shared property as an alternative to individual, exclusive property.
The proposal centers on Circular Device Management, which includes:
- Local Repair and Refurbishment: Empowering communities with the skills, tools, and knowledge to repair and maintain their own devices. This reduces costs, creates local opportunities, and extends device lifespans.
- Devices as a Commons: Moving beyond individual ownership toward shared, community-managed pools of devices. This ensures more efficient use, better tracking, and equitable access.
- Traceability and Data Security: Leveraging federated registries for transparency and accountability, and robust data sanitization practices so that devices can be safely reused without compromising privacy.
- Responsible End-of-Life Practices: Ensuring that devices are properly recycled when they can no longer be used, preventing harmful e-waste from impacting vulnerable environments.
Circularity as a foundation for community digital autonomy
What makes this approach particularly powerful is that it goes beyond sustainability—it enables community digital autonomy (digital sovereignty in the current draft, to be changed in future drafts to avoid unintended political connotations).
By building local capacity to manage devices, communities reduce dependence on global supply chains and external actors. They gain autonomy not only in accessing the Internet, but in maintaining and governing their own digital infrastructure.
Circularity lowers economic barriers, strengthens local ecosystems, and aligns environmental responsibility with social impact. It transforms devices from disposable commodities into long-term community assets.
A call to rethink Internet architecture
For engineers, policymakers, and community builders alike, this draft sends a clear message: user and network device lifecycles are part of Internet architecture.
If we want an Internet that is truly inclusive, resilient, and sustainable, we must design not only how networks are built—but how devices are circulated, maintained, and reused. Community-oriented management, ownership, and reuse are complementary models to individual ownership of single-use new devices.
Dive deeper
We see this work as a natural extension of our mission: promoting an open, inclusive, and sustainable Internet. Bridging the digital divide requires more than connectivity: it requires rethinking the entire ecosystem that makes connectivity meaningful, sustainable, and inclusive.
L’entrada Bridging the Digital Divide Through Circularity: Why Devices Matter as Much as Networks ha aparegut primer a Capítol Català de la Societat Internet.