Wilder and his friend Charles Wyble are the founders of The Free Network Foundation. In mid-October, they assembled two modems and six radio antennas to create the Freedom Tower, Occupy Wall Street’s public WiFi source. Their foundation has been paying about $80 each month to keep New York City’s resident protesters online.

Their larger goal, however, is an ambitious one: creating a new kind of Internet, with an off-the-grid component just for OWS.

When their work is done, the pair hope to have created a decentralized peer-to-peer network that provides discounted Internet access across the country, via what is known as a mesh network.