There are plenty of community network projects all with their different relevance. Every solution has its own strengths and weaknesses. It's not like in xkcd 927 as there isn't a standard for what I have in mind, yet.
Freifunk is a big success in Germany. In 2022 there are roughly about 40.000 nodes online. Why not just use Freifunk but develop a new community network from scratch?
As Freifunk is the most active community around here I would like to point out some shortcomings of this project. Firstly it mainly aims to be a solution that gives its users Internet access. The focus of pplzsnet though is building a local, reliable, interoperable and resilient networking infrastructure. There are also some other downsides why I consider Freifunk not to be an alternative to pplznet. Other than that Freifunk is using a superb concept especially looking at gluon and it is relatively low maintenance.
The biggest weakness of Freifunk though is it mainly operating wirelessly. Of course that's convenient, but it doesn't offer the horsepower that people in a community network need.
pplznet focuses on building a local infrastructure that shall become a standard for community networks. The main goal is to take control over communications and to empower the users. The community uses a community communications infrastructure. All devices, cabling and other passive or active components shall be in the hand of the community. At the border of the communities's geographical borders, there will be just handover points. At pplznet we call those Internodes.
As fiber based communication is not only the fastest but also the most reliable one (if done correctly), pplznet networks are supposed to end in being fiber in most parts. Wireless connections can still be used, but mainly in scenarios where a fiber connection is not possible. This will make a pplznet cluster very fast and extremely reliable.
Today we are victims of the products that the market offers. This is by far not what todays technology can do for us. We get stripped down products, which are not sufficient but frustrating.
Most of the other available projects focus on their very own area like NYC Mesh or Guifi. pplznet aims to be a standard for every region on earth, may it be developing or developed regions.