The Teenagers Who Wired Romania
The story of Romanian teenagers who, in the early days of the internet, risked their lives to rig cables between tower blocks to create a DIY network that inspired telecoms giants
In the late 90s, in daring feats of DIY networking on rooftops across Romania鈥檚 capital, Bucharest, teenagers are stringing computer cables between tower blocks to share an internet connection. This guerilla infrastructure starts out scrappy, but it sprawls into an impressive, improvised network that catches the attention of telecoms giants. Told by those who built it: Master cabler Roxana Ardelean, DIY network designer Eric B膬leanu, and rooftop cable runner Lauren葲iu Simion.
This is the extraordinary story of how a homemade system became the backbone of a city - a reflection of what the internet was meant to be鈥� and what it became.
Presenter: Andrada Fiscutean
Producer: Tom Bonnett
Editors: Ilan Goodman and Martin Smith
Archive: Special Assignment: Romania, 蘑菇短视频 Radio 4, 05/01/1990
This documentary grew out of a book chapter Andrada Fiscutean co-authored with researchers Alexandra T膬tar and Alexandra Bardan: A Web of Cables: The History and Legacy of Grassroots Neighborhood LANs in Romania. It's published in Silicon Dawn: Histories and Cultures of Creative Computing in Europe.
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