Subject: [gaia] GAIA Proposed Charter

From: Arjuna Sathiaseelan <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 4 Mar 2014 09:57:14 +0000

All,

 Please find the draft proposed charter for GAIA. Would like to get
your thoughts on this before we discuss this on Thursday. Thanks

Note - I wouldnt be keen to strike a debate whether access to the
Internet is a human right or an enabler for human right :) - but the
below statement relates to the ISOC survey which is relevant to the
IRTF.

In terms of area of interest, areas like network coding could be of
interest for diffused transmission across multiple links - but I am
presuming this is covered within the Information centric networking
framework?

Thoughts/feedback will be great.

We are planning to have a full day GAIA workshop most probably in
Africa sometime over the summer. I am trying to work the logistics
with CTO and others. We can discuss this during the meeting.

It will be also good to know whether it maybe worthwhile to explore
the options of having an annual GAIA meeting/workshop in conjunction
with ACM ICTD/DEV apart from one meeting at the IETF to start with.

Arjuna

---
The Internet Society's recent global Internet survey reveals that the
Internet should be considered as a basic human birth right like clean
water, public roads, work/school etc., because of its societal
benefits. However, in the reality of today's Internet, the vision of
global access to the Internet faces the challenge of a growing digital
divide, i.e., a growing disparity between those with sufficient access
to the Internet and those who cannot afford access to the essential
services provided by the Internet.

Access problems often result from sparsely spread populations living
in physically remote locations, since it is simply not cost effective
for Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to install the required
infrastructure for broadband Internet access to these areas. In
addition to the physical limitations of terrestrial infrastructures
(mainly due to distance) to provide last mile access, remote
communities also incur higher costs for connection between the
exchange and backbone network when using wired technologies. A large
exchange may accommodate many users and allow for competition between
service operators; in contrast, a rural/remote broadband often does
not offer economies of scale, raising the costs per user. Thus,
although service requirements for customers in rural/remote areas and
cities are identical, the delivery mechanism needs to be different.

Addressing digital exclusion due to socio-economic barriers is also
extremely important. The United Nations revealed the global disparity
in fixed broadband access, showing that access to fixed broadband
mainly in less-developed countries costs almost 40 times their
national average income. This problem is even encountered in developed
countries, where many individuals find themselves unable to pass a
necessary credit check or live in circumstances that are too unstable
to commit to lengthy broadband contracts.

There are both policy and research challenges to the realisation of a
future Internet capability that will offer appropriate access to all
parts of society. There can be no single uniform solution that
embraces all types of user and all locations.

The Global Access to the Internet for All (GAIA) is an IRTF initiative that aims

(1) to create maximum visibility and interest among the community on
the challenges in enabling global Internet access;

(2) to create a shared vision among researchers, corporations, non
governmental and governmental organisations on the challenges;

(3) to articulate and foster collaboration among them to address the
diverse Internet access and architectural challenges;

(4) to document and share deployment experiences and research results
to the wider community through scholarly publications, white papers,
Informational and Experimental RFCs etc;

(5) to have a longer term vision on influencing standardisation
efforts at the IETF that could potentially change the Internet
landscape to be more inclusive.

Areas of Interest:

1. Related projects and deployment experiences

2. Innovations in access technologies that enable efficient low cost
spectrum use

3. Characterising broadband performance

4. Identifying and incorporating new architectures (for e.g.
Information-centric networking, delay-tolerant networking etc) to improve
access and reduce wastage (bandwidth, energy)

5. New Internet architectures (for e.g. using Software Defined
Networking) that enable multi-stakeholder participation incentivising
subsidised access

6. Multi-layer resource pooling

7. Supporting effectively different service classes, with
authentication, authorization and accounting (AAA) for different
traffic/service types

8. Security and privacy concerns

9. Socio-economic models for adoption and deployment

Membership

Membership is open.

Meetings

GAIA meetings will be held at least once a year in conjunction with
the IETF. At least one other yearly meeting will be held in
conjunction with an academic conference.
-- 
Arjuna Sathiaseelan | http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~as2330/

---

From: Jim Forster <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 04 Mar 2014 10:56:05 +0000

Arjuna, all:

I strongly support the goals of GAIA as articulated in your message, and the importance of policy in achieving these goals.

I would take a small issue with one statement in the second paragraph:

> infrastructure for broadband Internet access to these areas

While I agree that there are some remote locations that are more expensive than others, there are also many locations that are unserved today, but which might reasonable reached through technologies in use today, and even more by normal progression of Moore's Law.

An example is AirJaldi, a Wireless ISP for rural India, started first by Yahel Ben-David (who posted earlier to this list).  AirJaldi pushes the Internet into the more remote and rural areas of India, such as Garwal, Kuamon.  We use low cost directional WiFi gear, usually solar powered, for backhaul, distribution, and access.   A recent study for Google, "Connectivity Models for Developing Economies", by Benoit Felton (http://www.diffractionanalysis.com/2014/03/03/white-paper-connectivity-models-for-developing-economies/ ), describe's AirJaldi's history and approach.  

I would make a couple further observations:

 * Mobile broadband is not the only way to do broadband.  The mobile companies are very important, and their solution will undoubtedly dominate for consumer Internet access, but for a school or business that wants 2-20Mbos continuously other technologies can be useful.

 * Fixed lines do not exist in these unserved areas, but yet a replacement is needed.  Service to a location has technical advantages over service to a mobile phone; in particular a small antenna can be mounted on a roof, and deliver 10-30db signal gain over a mobile at very little cost.  

 * Fiber is always best, but does not reach everywhere.  What's the best technologies to use after the fiber?

I'm in London for the IETF, but unfortunately must leave before the Thursday meeting.

 -- Jim

---

From: Arjuna Sathiaseelan <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 4 Mar 2014 11:18:48 +0000

Thanks Jim for the pointers. I agree with your observations and link
to one of my paper that shares your thoughts (but more for the
developed world perspective):
http://lec.sagepub.com/content/28/6/580.short

In the UK, we have similar initiatives: Tegola in
Scotland(http://www.tegola.org.uk/networks.html) the WRAY project in
Lancaster (http://imagination.lancaster.ac.uk/activities/Telling_Tales_Engagement_Wray_Broadband_Project).

It will be great to meet you and discuss more. Will send an offline
email to see if we can meet tomorrow :). Thanks Jim.

---

From: "Trossen, Dirk" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 6 Mar 2014 12:26:11 -0500

All,

Following up on the discussion during the meeting, I would suggest to
make some clearer references to future 5G effort worldwide since (as
Dirk Kutscher pointed out) many of the concepts and technologies as well
as economic considerations (e.g., multi-tenant business models)
considered for future 5G networks could very relevant for this group
with a possible mission in this charter to include the universal access
challenge into the overall objectives of various worldwide 5G efforts.

Best,

Dirk

-----Original Message-----
From: gaia [mailto:[email-masked]] On Behalf Of Arjuna
Sathiaseelan
Sent: 04 March 2014 11:19
To: Jim Forster
Cc: gaia
Subject: Re: [gaia] GAIA Proposed Charter

Thanks Jim for the pointers. I agree with your observations and link to
one of my paper that shares your thoughts (but more for the developed
world perspective):
http://lec.sagepub.com/content/28/6/580.short

In the UK, we have similar initiatives: Tegola in
Scotland(http://www.tegola.org.uk/networks.html) the WRAY project in
Lancaster
(http://imagination.lancaster.ac.uk/activities/Telling_Tales_Engagement_
Wray_Broadband_Project).

On 4 March 2014 10:56, Jim Forster <[email-masked]> wrote:
> Arjuna, all:
>
> I strongly support the goals of GAIA as articulated in your message,
and the importance of policy in achieving these goals.

> While I agree that there are some remote locations that are more
expensive than others, there are also many locations that are unserved
today, but which might reasonable reached through technologies in use
today, and even more by normal progression of Moore's Law.
>
> An example is AirJaldi, a Wireless ISP for rural India, started first
by Yahel Ben-David (who posted earlier to this list).  AirJaldi pushes
the Internet into the more remote and rural areas of India, such as
Garwal, Kuamon.  We use low cost directional WiFi gear, usually solar
powered, for backhaul, distribution, and access.   A recent study for
Google, "Connectivity Models for Developing Economies", by Benoit Felton
(http://www.diffractionanalysis.com/2014/03/03/white-paper-connectivity-
models-for-developing-economies/ ), describe's AirJaldi's history and
approach.
>  * Mobile broadband is not the only way to do broadband.  The mobile
companies are very important, and their solution will undoubtedly
dominate for consumer Internet access, but for a school or business that
wants 2-20Mbos continuously other technologies can be useful.
>
>  * Fixed lines do not exist in these unserved areas, but yet a
replacement is needed.  Service to a location has technical advantages
over service to a mobile phone; in particular a small antenna can be
mounted on a roof, and deliver 10-30db signal gain over a mobile at very
little cost.
>
>  * Fiber is always best, but does not reach everywhere.  What's the
best technologies to use after the fiber?

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Dirk Trossen 
Principal Engineer
InterDigital UK, Inc.
Shoreditch Business Center
64 Great Eastern Street
London, EC2A 3QR
T: +44 20 7749 9178
[email-masked]
www.InterDigital.com

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