Interconnection of Broadband Islands in Developing Regions

We present research on how to establish sustainable broadband markets in rural areas of developing regions. Due to an increasing political awareness of the importance of ICT for development, many such regions are now being networked. Since they have little legacy to consider, there are opportunities to leapfrog and stimulate solutions tailored to future needs and public good. The specific properties of the network topologies discussed are due to the piecemeal deployment of optical fiber creating broadband islands to be connected via whatever narrowband links available. The quality of service in such networks of interconnected broadband islands can be optimized by making the broadband islands self-sustained and managing the narrowband links by clever use of bandwidth management schemes, buffering, caching, etc., tailored to the needs of the specific services and applications. Our strategy assumes an open access regulatory regime allowing sharing of communication resources, opening up for innovative business models and new value chains. It calls for new technical solutions, also considering power consumption and cost. Our research includes experimental validation, currently focusing on two pilots in rural Tanzania, having one of the most open regulatory frameworks in Sub-Saharan Africa. The paper discusses a network design and outlines experiments underway in the pilots.