OPLANs are good news and hugely appreciated by those who increasingly have access to one. But their potential is not yet widely understood. Nor is it understood that they are the inevitable and obvious way of future communications.

The Foundation is a not-for-profit organisation which will be seeking charitable status in the UK, US and elsewhere as appropriate. The OPLAN Foundation has been established to educate people of the potential benefits of taking an OPLAN approach to the development of advanced digital local infrastructure to serve their own community - wherever that is.

To date, OPLANs have met with fierce opposition from conventional telecommunications operators and this will intensify as they become more prevalent. There have already been a number of significant legal challenges in the US and Europe to towns and cities that have embarked upon planning the development of their own autonomous OPLAN.

Against this background the OPLAN Foundation will provide a 'common cause' platform or `meta- community' for all existing OPLANs as well as a resource to those communities, of whatever scale and size, who wish to see the future development of an OPLAN to serve their own needs.

There are many admirable and much valued initiatives promoting vital elements of an OPLAN world ( e.g. www.ftthcouncil.org or www.wifi-forum.com). But there is not as yet an overarching canopy which can bring a sense of scale and unity of purpose to the myriad of local OPLAN-type initiatives springing up around the world. The Foundation will aim to build with public policy makers, a greater awareness of this grass-roots revolution in communications and to better inform them of the fruits which their societies will harvest from letting the OPLAN model spread wider and faster throughout their own jurisdictions.

The OPLAN Foundation will remain resolutely independent of any specific technology vendor or legal entity investing in, or owning OPLANs, whatever their structure. But it will seek and accept support from any corporation which stands to benefit from the accelerated arrival of the new world of 'open abundance' which will be finally brought about by the widespread adoption of OPLAN principles.