There are plenty of community network projects all with their different relevance. Every solution has its own strengths and weaknesses.
Freifunk for example 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 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 is not on building a local, reliable networking infrastructure. There are also some other downsides why I consider Freifunk to not be an alternative. One is that you need dedicated access points which cannot serve any other purpose but to run Freifunk. You cannot have your access point for your own homenetwork to also act as a freifunk node. You can workaround that, but a workaround isn't called a solution for a reason.
Another downside of Freifunk is that it's mainly wireless. Of course that's convenient, but it doesn't offer the horsepower that people in a community network need.
pplznet focues 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. 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 much more 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.