S04: Symposium on Connecting the Un/Under-Connected in Future Networks

SYMPOSIUM ORGANIZERS

• Sudhir Dixit, Basic Internet Foundation, USA
• Ashutosh Dutta, JHU/APL, USA

SCOPE AND MOTIVATION

There are numerous projects and initiatives ongoing around the world, however, these are fragmented and lack the critical mass and coordination to be able to impact the future standards, product development, and cost of deployment otherwise achievable by volume. The workshop aims to bring all those activities together in a single event to discuss the challenges, solutions, and potential for collaboration opportunities while influencing the network service providers, manufacturers and governments around the world to raise the issues to the forefront.

While technologies are available today, they need to be customized and optimized at the systems level to bring down the cost of network in order to be affordable. In addition, the content needs to be relevant and in local languages to be of useful, not to mention the need to offer innovative human-computer interaction (HCI) solutions (that are not text based) so that people who are not literate or digitally savvy can easily use the devices and consume services. Another important requirement is of flexible spectrum allocation regime at the lower range of the spectrum to increase reach and coverage. The use of renewable energy sources will enable deployment in remote areas where there is lack of power grid, or it is intermittent. In short, this workshop will highlight a number of technology gaps that should be addressed in 5G and B5G networks, such that access is affordable and content and services are actually consumed by the target set of users. Technology aside, the need to develop innovative business models is a must so that the solutions are commercially sustainable in the long term. A number of such models, especially designed for the rural population, will be discussed, such as Village Level Entrepreneur (VLE), Freemium (Free + Premium), revenue sharing among the cascade of service providers, subsidized billing by USOF (Universal Service Obligation Funds). Finally, the workshop aims to summarize the state-of-the-art from today to 3 years, 5 years, and 10 years.

TOPICS OF INTEREST

We invite submissions on a wide range of research topics, spanning both theoretical and systems research, including results from industry and academic/industrial collaborations, related but not restricted to the following topics:

Technological Issues

• 3GPP releases and equipment timelines as related to the goals of CTU
• Coverage and power issues
• Backhaul networks terrestrial and non-terrestrial
• Content storage and distribution
• Infrastructure pooling and security
• Network architectures
• Role of IoT and machines in rural and remote communities
• Human-computer interaction
• Authentication, security, and privacy in the context of digitally illiterate users

Advanced Applications and Services

• Different Classes of Services
• QoS and application interfaces commensurate with user capacities

Economic Factors

• Cooperative Business Models
• Novel business models that are affordable - Enablement of vertical industries
• Cost of connectivity
• User ownership
• Micro-operator eco-system

Legal and Regulatory

• Spectrum usage
• Revenue sharing models
• GDPR
• Access to Data
• Data Ownership

Availability, Reliability, and Liability Deployment issues

• Rural / Low-population density areas
• Scalability issues
• Financing issues
• Infrastructure investments
• Coordination and Co-investment
• Institutional facilitation

Symposium Paper Submission

All papers should be submitted via EDAS, Symposium on Connecting the Un/Under-Connected in Future Networks track. Full instructions on how to submit papers are provided on the IEEE FNWF 2023 website: https://fnwf2023.ieee.org/

TPC Members

Sandeep Agrawal
Daniel Altanirano 
Mohamed-Slim Alouini 
Josef Noll
Marvin Arias Olivas 
Abhishek Thakur 
Anuj Agrawal 
Vimal Bhatia 
Pranav Jha 
Matogoro Jabhera 
Amit Karna
Sanjram Khanganba 
Catherine Kimambo 
Roman Lara-Cueva 
Nelson Wasilwa 
Harri Saarnisaari 
Abdelaali Chaoub 
Brejesh Lall
Nan Zang 
Luciano Mendes 
Adrian Kliks 
Amit Singhal 
Marco Giordani
Sirpa Aalto 
Muhammad Imran Asghar
Hendrik Berndt
Yan Chen
Risto Jurva
Pasi Karppinen 
Markku Kekkonen 
Marianne Kinnula 
Panagiotis Kostakos 
Johanna Lindberg 
Edward Mutafungwa
Elina Rossi 
Seppo Yrjölä 
Anssi Öörni
Petri Ahokangas 
Fan Chen
Netta Iivari
Marcos Katz
Atte Kinnula
Harri Oinas-Kukkonen 
Ian Oppermann
Ella Peltonen 
Volker Ziegler