alt Hacker NewsThat's a great idea. I see at least 2 difficulties emerging: first security, then servicing.
No private or public entity will grant access to valuable proprietary hardware, as unacceptable risks will not only come from building owners, but also from anyone entering premises.
Also, managing remote nodes evenly spreaded across all areas will be costly. Think of armies of techs on the road permanently, with access problem, dogs or pest barriers, and so on.
A way to solve this would be the allocation of a planned space per block everywhere, which would be safely secured - then available and accessible to all utility organizations: electric, isp, water, phone, data, etc. Heat, power, mini data centers, and such could serve all buildings on a block.
Then other problems emerges: having utilities plan and use these together. Would only work if all services belong to the same entity.
A way around, of course, would be for individuals to setup servers they would own, and rent to data brokers, like Holo project once planned for.
There needs to be incentives for people other than the distributed system users to participate as hosts. Risks also need a way to be offloaded cheaply by the hosts.
Risks: Co-mingling your home's ISP with the basement rack seems like a surefire way to get your personal devices blocked if external basement rack users are running a VPN through it and doing heinous stuff. Annoying, maybe solvable with an ISP device reboot. But that particular risk is worse depending on whether the host's jurisdiction allows the assumption of identity based on IP. Risks around general liability. Risks around tax implications when internal revenue folks see the opportunity to collect capital gains tax on your income generating property. So many risks!
The only encounters I've had with companies trying to incentivize this type of setup are Storj and Sia - both pay their host operators in cryptocurrency, which is just another risk IMO. Despite my own involvement with Storj, generating enough income to offset my energy bill by about 25% monthly, the implementation that wins out and gains wide traction has a lot of groundwork to lay for those utility contracts, risks, and incentives.