The role of these actors is in particular :
 Create and maintain public non-profit areas on the Net.
 Provide all the training services required for a democracy of knowledge for local leaders, teachers, librarians and young, entrepreneurs.
 Support local economic development initiatives focused on information to satisfy the growing demand for jobs in this sector and take into account the fact that nearly 90% of new jobs created are done so by small and medium sized businesses.
 Design, develop and possess one’s own telecommunication infrastructures that include the pipelines, fibre-optic cable, shared premises, local data exchange centres.
 Create an ICT information and consultation centre in the service of the community.
 Set up an independent community publication and diffusion system that uses the Internet to diffuse texts, voice, radio, television, multimedia.

To achieve this, community networks must meet the following challenges :
 Break out of their isolation and link up with social movements. Take a pedagogical approach and coordinate debates on alternative political proposals related to communications and the social appropriation of ICTs.
 Develop networks of partnerships not limited by geographic frontiers (between places at national level and between countries) and technological partnerships (with other written and electronic media).
 Create and diffuse institutional models for community appropriation at local level.
 Create public community multimedia centres that combine written, electronic (radio and television), computer science and the Internet as well as archive and documentation centres in which individuals and groups in the community can make and diffuse their own productions.

Some community networks have survived the tidal wave of Internet commercialisation by demonstrating a capacity to adapt and innovate technically and structurally, and create content. They now stand out as credible actors capable of inventing and proposing dynamic and innovative forms of networking at local level that call for partnerships between different social actors.

These orientations of proposals all point to creation and maintaining community control over non-profit, independent and jointly managed public spaces. The goals are to achieve greater independence in mastering and controlling technologies, the creation of diverse, original contents, research and benchmarking, setting up social economy companies specialised in ICTs, new institutional and organisational forms based on dynamic partnerships.