The Study Connectivity Solution In Rural

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

This thesis, serve to explore and bring out the reality behind the connectivity challenges that are experienced by people leaving in disadvantage area also known as rural community area. Rural community areas and smaller cities around the world are always subject to a limited telecommunications infrastructure, especially those which are geographically remote and isolated due to lack of infrastructure investment. In addition to the common channels of communication such as face-to-face, voice and written communication, rural people and visitors moving in and out of a rural area is another important source of information, in recent years, radios and televisions have become increasingly important channels of information, but they are limited to one-way communication, where there is no interaction. Of late, another important communication channel in rural areas in recent years is the Very High Frequency (VHF) radio telephone service (Bala et al., 2000).

Very Small Aperture Terminals (VSATs) are also used to link to satellites to provide Internet access in rural community, public telephone service and fax lines to certain rural areas (Unimas, 2004).

Shyam Networks (n.d.) has written and demonstrated that, Just like Urban areas the potential for broadband growth in rural community areas is immense. However providing affordable connectivity to people in rural areas is a challenge. Rural populations live beyond the reach of traditional communication infrastructure. In addition average revenue per user (ARPU) is low, the topography is challenging, and basic infrastructure like electricity and roads are in short supply skilled technical recourses are very hard to come by. While developing rural areas is a priority and telecom is a catalyst, unless there is a highly cost effective and viable solution to deliver services nothing can be achieved.

With the provision of Internet access via satellite links in rural areas, there are two alternatives of networking in rural areas, namely wired networking and wireless networking. However, wireless networking provides various advantages in rural conditions. First, in rural areas with scattered populations, using wireless networks can save the high cabling cost of the wired alternative. Secondly, wireless networks can ease installation in situations that are difficult-to-wire, for example when rivers, roads or other obstacles separate the facilities to be connected. Besides that, it can also reduce installation time, where installation of cabling is often a time-consuming task. Moreover, wireless networks also offer the benefit of increased reliability, where a frequently occurring problem faced by wired networks is the system downtime due to cable (Khalid, 2004)

1.2 Background

Fixed line penetration around rural community areas has experienced a very little growth in the last decade and has even suffered continuous declined in the recent years of mobile telephone expansion. The fixed line infrastructure is concentrated in more populated areas (Urban areas) leaving the majority of rural areas totally unconnected. The ITU estimates that in 2007 less than 3 percent of all sub – Saharan African villages had access to a fixed – line connectivity services and less than 0.5 percent of sub- Saharan African village had access to a public internet infrastructure.

With the implementation of wireless technology, remote villages and their residents would be able to enjoy many more opportunities in the areas of learning and economic enhancement.

Through a wireless signal, high-speed Internet may be able to equalize the difference between the opportunities for those in rural areas as compared to the opportunities for those in urban areas. For example, items that one used to have to drive over 150 miles to purchase can now be delivered to their front door in a matter of days.

Inversely, a rural business owner now has the opportunity to promote and sell his/her products online, thus opening a new market for their goods. This interconnectivity of people is important in sustaining the small towns and smaller cities that make up rural locations; and with faster, affordable connections, citizens in rural areas will have this opportunity to connect with millions around the world.

This Calls for a solution that should be:

Low in cost – Dramatic reduction in capital expenses and operational costs compared with the mainstream technology.

Easy to Deploy – Removing the dependency on a skilled or literate workforce

Modelled for purpose – Using business models that take account local resources and limitations

Robust – Capable of withstanding extreme temperatures and the harsh rural environment.

Network Companies in our days can offer a complete range of wireless products enabling service providers to extend their voice and data networks into underserved rural and remote areas – rapidly, viably and profitably.(Shyam Network, 2011)

1.3 Purpose of the Research

This study seeks to explore the Connectivity solution in rural community areas, by looking at the challenges and difficulties people within rural community area experience in terms of signal coverage and connectivity services.

The following points are some of the objectives that I will be developing within the context of the connectivity solution in rural areas community:

The connectivity challenges experienced by people in rural community areas

A New Model for Rural connectivity Solution

Benefits of Wireless Technology at remote village

Lack of Infrastructures facilities and solutions

1.4 Research Question

Based on the current discussion Topic, this research project will try to acknowledge the following questions:

What are some of the current wired and wireless options that can be considered in order to improve domestic backbone and "last mile" connectivity?

Is the technical convergence increasingly playing a key role in competition and regulation of the telecommunications sector?

Is a lack of communication infrastructure in rural community area a cause of poor connectivity signal?

Why might states want to consider developing social service policies that target rural areas?

1.5 Hypothesis

I have strong convictions that connectivity coverage at rural community areas can be improved by investing or building more infrastructure facilities at remote village so that people within those areas are treated equally as the one at urban areas.

Connectivity can also be used for educational purposes in a society not only in workplaces but also in home and business environment. All these would be possible but the poor infrastructure facilities and lack of planning are some of the challenges that need to be addressed carefully.

1.6 Scope of the Study

In this project research, the attention will be on the connectivity solution and ways and option to overcome the connectivity challenges experienced by people at rural community areas.

An exchange of ideas will also take place with community members in and out of rural areas so that experiences are shared and acknowledge.

1.7 Outline Methodology

This research project will make use of both Qualitative and Quantitative Methods to gather information about Connectivity solution from different resources and background such as: People living in rural areas and also those affected by the challenges in above community areas direct or indirectly.

Interview will be conducted to analyze the challenges people goes through in order to acquire basic connectivity

A questionnaire will be distributed among the community members to gather information that address their challenges and ways moving forward.

1.8 Problem statement

We briefly use this section to outline some of the application specific challenges and describe our initial design ideas towards addressing some of these challenges.

QoS Challenges: Many important applications in rural developing world such as telephony, telemedicine and distance learning would require QoS guarantees from the underlying network layer.

The underlying MAC layer does provide a certain level of error-recovery; this is typically insufficient to achieve end-to-end QoS. In addition, the net available bandwidth on each link varies as a function of time due to the TDMA protocol used at the MAC layer. Providing QoS guarantees in a network where every link is lossy as well as has time-varying bandwidth is known to be a hard problem; traditional QoS mechanisms have been designed for networks with fixed capacities.

To solve this problem, the leverage ideas from prior work on QoS will be considered carefully, an overlay network based architecture that uses the basic concept of a controlled loss virtual links (CLVL) to provide statistical end-to-end QoS over bandwidth-varying lossy network links.

1.9 Overview of the research

This research basically provides a general overview into Connectivity solution – at rural community areas in particular. How the lack of proper connectivity infrastructure has been affecting the lives of the community telecommunication wise.

The research goes deep into exploring ways and option to overtake the current connectivity challenges at rural community so that it can be integrated into their community more infrastructure facilities and utilise them as learning tools to better their lives from the individual point of view as well as their business perspective.

1.10 Value of the project

Connectivity is known as a degree to which networks: streets, neighbourhoods, walking routes, link services infrastructures facilities and also interconnect them.

The project will look at different options available in order to take them into consideration so that connectivity challenges are alleviated and well established.