On the Design of Inclusive Ubiquitous Access Amos Nungu Telecommunication Systems Lab KTH Royal Institute of Technology Forum 120, 164 40 Kista, Sweden Email: amnungu@kth.se Robert Olsson Telecommunication Systems Lab KTH Royal Institute of Technology Forum 120, 164 40 Kista, Sweden Email: robert@herjulf.net Bj¨ orn Pehrson Telecommunication Systems Lab KTH Royal Institute of Technology Forum 120, 164 40 Kista, Sweden Email: bpehrson@kth.se Abstract—The development towards ubiquitous network access requires innovative solutions to get remote areas included, espe- cially rural areas of developing regions. The challenges include robustness of network components, poor or non-existent power supply and sustainable business models. We argue that large scale user-driven community networks are becoming technically viable to deploy in areas that are short of supply of telecom- munication services due to little or no commercial interest. To support this claim, we discuss the design of key network elements and careful power management based on alternative energy sources and storage. We also provide a status report from ongoing field-tests regarding provisioning of broadband network services in Serengeti, Tanzania, and outline briefly our strategy to achieve sustainability. On the technical side, we first discuss an affordable, high-performance, low-effect router based on open source software and standard off-the-shelf hardware offering both copper and fibre links. Our design is capable of forwarding more than 700kpps at 22.3W. The power consumption is considerably less than all alternatives in our comparison. Then we discuss power management and the use of batteries and super- capacitors as backup and storage solutions. I. I NTRODUCTION In the knowledge society, ubiquitous access to communica- tion networks and services, broadband as well as mobile, is becoming a prerequisite to keep up with your peers, whether you are an individual, an organization or a country, wherever you are based. Broadband networks have also been identified by the UN Broadband Commission [1] as uniquely power- ful tools for achieving the Millennium Development Goals. Ubiquitous access is thus a social and economical challenge, not only a technical. There are many areas that are under- served due to the perceived business risks. In most of these areas, there is demand but no supply since the revenue streams are unpredictable and the costs high due to the investments required in infrastructure, such as optical fibre cables, reliable electrical power and a complete commercial supply chain. In developing regions, the risks may also include political components due to unstable policies and under-developed regulatory frameworks. Even though many rural areas enjoy access to mobile phone networks, few of them provide broadband services due to lack of broadband communication infrastructure. Local broadband communication services are mostly non-existent while Internet access is sometimes provided via narrowband VSATs connec- tions through community access points (telecenters). Our research is focusing on first mile rather than last mile strategies to bridge the digital divide by stimulating the development of local broadband markets, starting from the end-users. We advocate the creation of local community-driven broadband islands, meaning that the uplink, if it exists, is narrowband, until the necessary upstream infrastructure be- comes available. Thanks to the availability of easy-to-use and affordable high-performance standard PC hardware and open source software, large scale user-driven community networks are becoming technically viable to deploy in areas that are short of supply of telecommunication services due to little or no commercial interest. However, there are observations regarding the availability of power supply in rural developing regions [2], [3]. The challenge is therefore not only about minimizing the demand for power to reduce the environment foot print and save costs. It is also about managing the available power to be able to provide services when users need them, whether this is continuously 24/7 or according to a schedule, and to manage backup power storage optimally. As a service provider, you may not have access to any power infrastructure at all or you might have to manage planned rationing schemes, unplanned blackouts, brownouts, destructive transients, etc. Consequently, energy awareness and power management may have to become integrated in the communication systems architecture and even in application systems to allow user-control. Design of low-effect network elements is one approach. In this paper, we discuss our work on an affordable high- performance, low-effect router based on open source soft- ware and carefully selected standard off-the-shelf hardware offering both copper and optical fibre links, and a power management system designed to manage alternative energy sources and storage. The current version of the router is capable of forwarding more than 700kpps at 22.3W. This power consumption is considerably less than all alternatives in our comparison. We also report on ongoing field-tests based on the use of the current version of this router for provisioning of broadband network services in Serengeti, Tanzania [4]. We acknowledge earlier work on software routers such as [5], [6], [7], [8]. However, the context and design goals were different. To our knowledge, none of them considered robustness and low-power consumption as key factors in their designs. In addition, our work considered viable options for power backup and storage using ultra-capacitors. Our contribution in this paper is in the design of a low- 346 978-1-4577-1177-0/11/$26.00 ©2011 IEEE ICUFN 2011