I am totally with you on this point. I've been dreaming for local neighbourhood networks for more than ten years now, and still they don't show up. But the problem isn't really the cables, in a time of wireless networking, the local concept still doesn't take off - and I think it's mainly for security reasons. As soon as you open up a network for unknown people around you, everybody using it has to trust everybody else on this network a lot. Because there is no such thing as a completely secured network. I've been living in a dorm with local network connection to almost 5000 other students, and as happy as I was about the speed and the opportunities, I also heard about cases of stolen diploma thesis, malicious harddisk deleting, and the like. Agreed, this can happen on the internet, too, but on a smaller network, with no ISP giving basic security control, the chances seem to be much higher.

But lately some thing called DLan has come to my notice, that uses already installed copper cable for highspeed networking - maybe it is strong enough for reaching your neighbours houses, too, so you need just some good routers and some kind of token ring structure for data transmission, in order to get local networks without digging up the garden in the yards.

My thoughts on liberated connectivity (internet access 3.0) and a wireless version can be found here: http://thoughtsnessays.blogspot.com/2007/08/open-web-liberate-connectivi...