Presentations/IISC

From Www.india-gii.org

Jump to: navigation, search

Contents

Riding the Wireless Tiger In India

The crucial importance of broadband wireless for many applications in developing countries, the politics in its development, and how it forms a very powerful force in conjunction with low-power FM radio.

Time and Venue

Day & Date  : Tuesday, May 24, 2005

Time  : 4:00 pm (Tea/Coffee: 3.45pm)

Venue  : Golden Jubilee Hall, 

                        ECE Department,
                        Indian Institute of Science,
                        Bangalore.

Agenda Outline

  1. Why is this topic important
  2. Why Now
  3. History of Technological Progress in Telecom, or the lack of it
    1. The automated exchange
    2. Mobility
    3. Digital
  4. Structure of Telecom Industry
    1. Dominated by large, vertically integrated telcos, that until recently had national monopolies. Almost every company does long-distance + last-mile, decides what you may connect to "their" network.
      1. Mostly propreitary hardware and software, very expensive
      2. Complicated billing and settlement
      3. Prices kept artificially high by regulating supply (less than 2% of the optic fiber is "lit")
  5. New Telecom
    1. Telecom is now divided into long-distance and last-mile
      1. Long-Distance is mostly via optic fiber, which can be owned by the railways, power grid, water company,... anyone with right of way
      2. The only problem remaining is how to connect the consumer to the optic fiber
    2. WiFi was designed for local networking of computers, but with directional antennas people are able to take bandwidth dozens of kilometers, with megabits per second of speed
    3. WiFi uses off-the-shelf equipment, open-source software, and is often free
    4. Examples
      1. Sylhet, Bangladesh http://www.learn-technologies.net/e-LEARN/Index.html
      2. Djursland
      3. Gangetic project, Bhaskaran Raman was involved with it, http://www.cse.iitk.ac.in/users/braman/dgp.html
  6. Significance of Wireless
    1. Digging for cable
      1. takes too long
      2. is very expensive
      3. needs right of way
    2. Fault-finding is harder in a wired system
  7. Changing Role of Spectrum Management
    1. Earlier, thin slices of exclusive private beach, now everyone can share one large beach
    2. In India you need clearance from 33 government departments to use wireless
    3. Recently, use of WiFi has been delicensed
  8. Telecom and Open Source Software
    1. While the large telecom companies largely use propreitary software, which is expensive, if you use WiFi, you are best served by open-source Linux-based software, that is reliable, cooperatively developed and free, so cuts down costs
  9. How FM radio ties in with Broadband Wireless Networking
    1. Only technology that the poor can afford
    2. Illiteracy no barrier
    3. Front-end for the Internet (radio browsing -- poor mans’ interface to the Internet)
    4. For radio, the Internet is:
      1. A terrific B2B tool
      2. A virtual recording studio
      3. A search engine, e.g. http://speechbot.research.compaq.com/
  10. How to get involved in changing policy
    1. responses to discussion papers of the regulator
    2. Oral comments at open house meetings
    3. Legal challenge
    4. Experimentation license
    5. “Piracy”

comments by Samudra

Reading List

http://www.saschameinrath.com/writings/WirelessingTheWorld.rtf

Wirelessing the World: Socio-Historical and Technological Factors Affecting the Battle over (Community) Wireless Networks, by Sascha D. Meinrath

This paper explores the behind-the-scenes battle over the future of wireless communications using twin foci: first, interweaving the social-historical context that undergirds the contemporary battle being carried out by major business interests to wrest control over the public airwaves (property often misappropriated by major business concerns using lobbying, licensure, and even outright lies); and second, focusing on the technological antecedents (often developed using public funding, then given away to private interests for private gain) and the technological standards (often set by industry groups to ensure their own profitability rather than establish the best option for the public) of these technologies.

http://thewirelessroadshow.org/tiki-index.php?page=WhyWiFiIsBetterForRuralCommunications A brief note by Arun Mehta on the advantages of WiFi for rural networking

http://www.cewit.org.in/interim-requirements-india_files/frame.htm "Interim Broadband Wireless System (3.5G) for India" (requires Internet Explorer)

http://www.seas.upenn.edu/~gaj1/auctngg.html "Auctioning the Airwaves" George Gilder

http://www.pta.gov.pk/xml_news/consultation_paper_rural_areas.pdf , Pakistan Telecom Authority CONSULTATION PAPER ON “ TELECOMMUNICATION IN rural areas of PAKISTAN ”

http://www.trai.gov.in/27octcon.htm Telecom Regulatory Authority of India Consultation paper on ‘Growth of telecom services in rural India’.

http://www.boston.com/business/technology/articles/2005/04/24/the_year_of_living_wirelessly?pg=full "The Year of Living Wirelessly" has thoughts on how going wireless changes the community, and the experiments in this regard.

Sebastian Buetterich's additions to the reading list:

david reeds open spectrum pages http://www.reed.com/dprframeweb/dprframe.asp?section=openspec (lots of good links, but quite US centered)

isabel netos work http://itc.mit.edu/itel/students/papers/neto_thesis.pdf this might be a good starter: http://userpage.fu-berlin.de/~jmueller/its/conf/berlin04/Presentations/Tuesday%2011.00-12.30/Session%2011.5/ITS_presentation_ineto_v2.ppt

open spectrum international http://www.volweb.cz/horvitz/osi/ (check out the 'Good Reading' link list)

itu  ;) http://www.itu.int/osg/spu/ni/spectrum/resources/reform/index.html some good links there


I found this to be an interesting approach to building up grass roots telephony networks; needs disciplined and well financed developers though! Reading the website, one is tempted to invest but then investment has to be followed up by adequate manegerial and long term qualified human resources. There is hardware relatively cheaply available for this project, but the skill level is "advanced" category. http://www.zapatatelephony.org/project.html

Addition to reading list from Bhaskar Raman:

The terms WiFi and 802.11 are equivalent. WiFi is the colloquial term for IEEE standard 802.11.

The Digital Gangetic Plains project at IIT Kanpur has been exploring the use of 802.11 (WiFi) for rural networking. The web page I maintain for this is:

http://www.cse.iitk.ac.in/users/braman/dgp.html

For reading, the appropriate material would be under "presentations" on the web page above:

"Digital Gangetic Plains (DGP): 802.11-based Low-Cost Networking for Rural India", Bhaskaran Raman, Presentation at Wireless4Development, Djursland, Denmark, Sep 2004. http://www.cse.iitk.ac.in/users/braman/pres/dgp-poster.pdf.gz

"Digital Gangetic Plains (DGP): 802.11-based Low-Cost Networking for Rural India, 2001-2004", Pravin Bhagwat, Dheeraj Sanghi, Bhaskaran Raman, Presentation at Project Review, Sep 2004. http://www.cse.iitk.ac.in/users/braman/pres/dgp-final.pdf.gz

The latter has a comparison with CorDECT as well. (CorDECT is also a low-cost wireless technology which has been developed for rural networking at IIT Madras, by the TENET group).

There are also relevant statistics from the ITU (International Telecommunication Union), which point out the discrepancy in the so called communication revolution in the third world (the above presentations have pulled out the relevant stats from: http://www.cse.iitk.ac.in/~bhaskar/dgp/stats/

Also relevant are the various cost factors in setting up a WiFi based network in a rural area (found in the presentations above).

A detailed report of our work is at: http://www.cse.iitk.ac.in/users/braman/papers/dgp-report.pdf A quick leafing through that may help -- you can ignore the technical details.

Retrieved from "http://www.india-gii.org/wiki/index.php/Presentations/IISC"
Personal tools