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According to a tweet by the member of parliament Jens Zimmermann (SPD), the finance committee of the Bundestag decided today, after long discussions, to make free-radio initiatives non-profit. Next week, the decision must still be confirmed by the Bundestag and then the Bundesrat.
A first announcement by the German government, according to which free radio initiatives are generally non-profit, was made at the beginning of 2019, and the Bundesrat (upper house of parliament) had already campaigned for free radio initiatives to be recognised as non-profit in the tax code.
Individual routers form a free-radio network
At the project Radio individual routers, which are often operated in private households but also in companies, form a common network through a direct connection with other routers within range. This creates local networks in which Data can be freely exchanged.
The necessary hardware and Bandwidth is provided free of charge by the initiatives and other members of the free radio networks. According to the Federal Council, Freifunk thus promotes "digital participation" and can thus be classified as a "non-profit civic engagement for a digital society".
Non-profit classification already possible
According to the German government, free-radio initiatives can already be recognised as non-profit initiatives under certain conditions. This is currently possible, for example, if freelance radio operators have set up a refugee accommodation with WLAN supply or pursue other charitable purposes.
The new regulation stipulates that the mere installation of a public WLAN for the general public is sufficient to be recognised as a non-profit organisation. The significantly lower hurdles are intended to make the project more attractive for employees and reduce the administrative workload.
In view of favourable mobile phone tariffs, such as the new Aldi annual packages and in the mobile phone network of constantly increasing bandwidths, which, according Huawei in the 5.5G network could be up to 1 Gbit/s, the future relevance of the project in Germany can be doubted.
