The teenagers who wired Romania

In the late 90s, in daring feats of DIY networking on rooftops across Romania’s 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 Băleanu, and rooftop cable runner Laurențiu 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 and what it became.

Presenter: Andrada Fiscutean

Producer: Tom Bonnett

Editors: Ilan Goodman and Martin Smith

Archive: Special Assignment: Romania, BBC Radio 4, 05/01/1990

(Photo: Teenagers lie on the roof of a building looking over the edge and affixing cables. Credit: Dan Nicolae)