Building a communication network that belongs to its territory.

LarrunKonnect was born from an observation made by an Akainar, passionate about tech and cybersecurity, but also about mountains and low-tech, who has spent years fascinated by low-resource communication systems — protocols able to run on a coin battery, a length of wire for an antenna, and plenty of common sense.

After enough hikes in the Pyrenees, watching the phone become useless the moment you left the valley, one idea took hold: what if the mountain could carry its own network? Not a miniature copy of 4G, but something humbler — text messages hopping from box to box, using almost nothing, belonging to the people who use them.

There was also a very concrete need: staying in touch with in-laws in Lesaka, on the other side of La Rhune, in Spain. Only a few kilometres as the crow flies, but a border, two carriers, and infrastructure that regularly cuts out on the mountain side. A text message getting through simply, crossing the ridge relay by relay, without asking anyone's permission — that's exactly what the network needed to make possible.

Meshtastic, LoRa, open hardware components at around €30, a worldwide community sharing its boards and configurations. All the ingredients were there. All that remained was to bring them together, here in Ascain, and invite the neighbours in.

“Mesh is the art of turning every hiker into a star that helps others find their constellation.”