Commonet

Sovereign community infrastructure

A new Canadian utility

The next grid isn't power.
It's community.

Commonet is national infrastructure for how Canadian communities communicate, coordinate, and take care of each other — built community by community, owned by Canadians.

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The components

What community resilience looks like

Three capabilities keep a community standing when outside help is still hours away. Each one maps to infrastructure we're building now.

Coordination

Beacon

Open Beta

Free local updates and alerts for neighbourhoods, campuses, towns, and events — no accounts, ads, or algorithms.

Activate your device

Education

Guides

Active

Community-owned knowledge and nationally supported skill development — first aid, emergency planning, and practical know-how.

Visit guides.co

Communication

Northpost

Early Access

Canadian email with no ads or monthly fees, built to run on a community-owned network.

Visit northpost.ca

The delivery mechanism

Community Ready brings Commonet to communities

Community Ready is a free national program that assesses community readiness, provides a structured, personalized implementation roadmap, helping communities become more resilient, connected, and owning their own infrastructure.

  1. 01

    Assessment

    A clear picture of where a community stands — gaps in coordination, knowledge, and communication during the first 72-hours after a disaster.

  2. 02

    Product implementation plan

    A practical rollout for Beacon, Guides, and Northpost matched to local needs — not a one-size-fits-all stack dump.

  3. 03

    Local implementation support

    Hands-on help standing up the tools with the people who will run them — municipalities, community halls, campuses, and local partners.

  4. 04

    Community-owned infrastructure

    Mesh networking hardware communities own and operate — backup connectivity when cell towers fail and traditional networks go quiet.

Visit communityready.ca

How it works

See how Commonet works in real communities

Scroll to explore — identity, places, knowledge, and resilience in under a minute.

01

Every device becomes a beacon

Every activated phone helps connect the community around it.

No download.

No account creation.

No personal profiles.

More like CB radio than social media.

02

Real places anchor the network

Neighborhoods. Businesses. Trailheads. Community halls.

Every place becomes its own communication — and learning — layer, drawing from a nationally supported training library.

  • How to use an AED
  • Emergency Evacuation Plan
  • Trail first aid

Local knowledge & skills, supported by the local community.

03

Community-owned. Nationally connected.

Each place runs as its own layer — owned locally, not rented from a platform.

Together those places form a resilient mesh: people and signals move between communities seamlessly.

Local ownership. Shared infrastructure. Real continuity.

04

Urgent information gets amplified

Attention becomes collective.

Communities can elevate urgent local information so nearby people become aware together.

Emergencies. Safety alerts. Missing persons. Severe weather.

05

Works even when networks go dark

Cell towers fail. The internet drops. Coordination still matters.

Safety Net hardware — pocket radios and community Lighthouses — keeps critical signals moving over a local mesh when everything else goes quiet.

Resilience you can touch, not a cloud you hope stays up.

A digital network for all Canadians

  • Local coordination.
  • Free communication.
  • Community ownership.
  • 100% Canadian.

This Is Commonet.

A DIFFERENT KIND OF INFRASTRUCTURE

The network is live. Help us make it more valuable.

Commonet is building a different kind of infrastructure — one that grows through communities rather than being imposed on them. We're looking for people, organizations and institutions who want to explore what we can build together, and help us make the network more useful, capable and resilient over time.

Community partners

Help us bring Commonet into communities where local people can build something lasting.

Institutional partners

Explore how Commonet can support public-interest infrastructure, resilience, skills and connectivity.

Builders & funders

Help us develop the technology, infrastructure and local capacity that allow the network to grow organically.

Let's explore what's possible

Tell us who you are, what you bring, and what you'd like to explore with Commonet.