Situating network infrastructure with people, practices, and beyond: A community building workshop

Our world is now connected and even entangled in unprecedented ways through networked technologies. Yet pockets of unequal connectivity persist, and technical infrastructures for connectivity remain difficult to design and build even for experts. In this workshop we aim to bring together a global community of multi- and inter-disciplinary researchers and implementers working on infrastructure development and connectivity to explore the existing design challenges and opportunities for bringing technical dimensions of networked infrastructures in conversation with human-computer interaction (HCI) and the social science of infrastructure. We will share, assess and define research problems and resources for rethinking networked infrastructures from human-, community-, and society-centered perspectives, understanding them to be embedded with human values and biases. We particularly intend our collaborative work to support real-world connectivity initiatives, which have grown in critical importance over the pandemic years—especially projects in support of Global South communities. Concrete deliverables from the workshop will include: (1) an initial shared bibliography to help formalize the state of knowledge in our area, (2) an agenda of shared goals, challenges, and intentions in our field, (3) a compilation of resources to support future work, and (4) social and organizing infrastructures for continued communication and academic collaboration

Democratizing Service Provider Networks

Presented on January 30, 2020 at 11:00 a.m. in the Klaus Advanced Computing Building, Room 1116W.Shaddi Hasan works on open wireless networks and rural connectivity at Facebook Connectivity. His research interests lie at intersection of computer networks and ICTD. His work addresses fundamental scale and flexibility challenges faced by service provider networks, especially in rural and developing regions, and has appeared in venues such as NSDI, IEEE DySPAN, ICTD, and SIGCOMM.Runtime: 54:00 minutesAs the internet grows in importance worldwide, legacy network architectures, closed vendor ecosystems, and rigid regulatory frameworks constrain innovation in internet service provider and mobile operator networks. As a result, the expansion of the internet is slowing, leaving more than 1.7 billion people without access, largely in rural areas. In this talk, I present approaches to enabling new classes of service providers that are able to expand the frontiers of the internet beyond what is achievable today. First, I present Nomadic GSM, a system that demonstrates community-run mobile networks can safely share radio spectrum with existing mobile network operators. Next, I present CCM, a system that shows how community networks and traditional mobile network operators can cooperate to share resources to extend service. Finally, I will discuss an evaluation of these systems through longitudinal deployments in Southeast Asia that provide service to thousands of rural people, as well as their implications for future service provider networks and universal access to the internet

Towards Scalable Community Networks

Over 400 million people live without access to basic communication services, largely in rural areas. Community-based networks, and particularly community cellular networks, can sustainably support services even in these extremely rural areas where traditional commercial network operators cannot. However, community cellular networks face a variety of technical, business, and regulatory challenges that hamper their proliferation.In this thesis, we aim to develop approaches to enable scale within and across community cellular networks. Through a mixed-methods study of more than 80 rural wireless Internet service providers, a related class of network operators, we identify key scaling challenges rural network operators face. We next present two approaches for addressing these challenges in the context of community cellular networks. The first, GSM Whitespaces, demonstrates that rural community cellular networks can safely share spectrum in bands occupied by incumbent mobile network operators, removing a key barrier to independent operation. The second, CCM, shows how community networks and incumbent mobile network operators can cooperate to share resources to extend service. We will explore each of these approaches through practical systems and longitudinal deployments of community cellular networks in Southeast Asia that provide service to thousands of rural people

Towards Scalable Community Networks

Over 400 million people live without access to basic communication services, largely in rural areas. Community-based networks, and particularly community cellular networks, can sustainably support services even in these extremely rural areas where traditional commercial network operators cannot. However, community cellular networks face a variety of technical, business, and regulatory challenges that hamper their proliferation.In this thesis, we aim to develop approaches to enable scale within and across community cellular networks. Through a mixed-methods study of more than 80 rural wireless Internet service providers, a related class of network operators, we identify key scaling challenges rural network operators face. We next present two approaches for addressing these challenges in the context of community cellular networks. The first, GSM Whitespaces, demonstrates that rural community cellular networks can safely share spectrum in bands occupied by incumbent mobile network operators, removing a key barrier to independent operation. The second, CCM, shows how community networks and incumbent mobile network operators can cooperate to share resources to extend service. We will explore each of these approaches through practical systems and longitudinal deployments of community cellular networks in Southeast Asia that provide service to thousands of rural people