Article

Scaling community cellular networks with community cellular manager

Authors:

Mary Claire Barela,

Matthew Johnson,

Kurtis HeimerlAuthors Info & Claims

NSDI'19: Proceedings of the 16th USENIX Conference on Networked Systems Design and Implementation

Pages 735 - 750

Published: 26 February 2019 Publication History

Abstract

Hundreds of millions of people still live beyond the coverage of basic mobile connectivity, primarily in rural areas with low population density. Mobile network operators (MNOs) traditionally struggle to justify expansion into these rural areas due to the high infrastructure costs necessary to provide service. Community cellular networks, networks built "by and for" the people they serve, represent an alternative model that, to an extent, bypasses these business case limitations and enables sustainable rural coverage. Yet despite aligned economic incentives, real deployments of community cellular networks still face significant regulatory, commercial and technical challenges.

In this paper, we present Community Cellular Manager (CCM), a system for operating community cellular networks at scale. CCM enables multiple community networks to operate under the control of a single, multi-tenant controller and in partnership with a traditional MNO. CCM preserves flexibility for each community network to operate independently, while allowing the mobile network operator to safely make critical resources such as spectrum and phone numbers available to these networks. We evaluate CCM through a multi-year, large-scale community cellular network deployment in the Philippines in partnership with Globe, the largest MNO in the country, providing basic communication services to over 2,800 people in 17 communities without requiring changes to the existing regulatory framework, and using existing handsets. We demonstrate that CCM can support independent community networks with unique service offerings and operating models while providing a basic level of MNO-defined service. To our knowledge, this represents the largest deployment of community cellular networks to date.

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Cited By

Bagalkot NShinde SVerdezoto NManuel GRamakka MIitumba NOrtega DDinesh TDensmore M(2024)Collective Infrastructural Speculations: A Situated Understanding of Pasts, Presents & Futures of Resilient Community Networks.Proceedings of the Participatory Design Conference 2024: Full Papers - Volume 110.1145/3666094.3666111(159-172)Online publication date: 11-Aug-2024
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cover image Guide Proceedings

NSDI'19: Proceedings of the 16th USENIX Conference on Networked Systems Design and Implementation

February 2019

800 pages

ISBN:9781931971492

Program Chairs:
Jay Lorch
Microsoft Research
,
Minlan Yu
Harvard University

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NetApp
amazon: amazon
NSF
Microsoft: Microsoft
Intel: Intel

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USENIX Association

United States

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Published: 26 February 2019

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Cited By

Bagalkot NShinde SVerdezoto NManuel GRamakka MIitumba NOrtega DDinesh TDensmore M(2024)Collective Infrastructural Speculations: A Situated Understanding of Pasts, Presents & Futures of Resilient Community Networks.Proceedings of the Participatory Design Conference 2024: Full Papers - Volume 110.1145/3666094.3666111(159-172)Online publication date: 11-Aug-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3666094.3666111
Johnson MSinganamalla SDurand NJang ESevilla SHeimerl KSekar VYu MSeneviratne AVeitch D(2024)dAuth: A Resilient Authentication Architecture for Federated Private Cellular NetworksProceedings of the ACM SIGCOMM 2024 Conference10.1145/3651890.3672263(373-391)Online publication date: 4-Aug-2024
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Simko LSri Ramulu HKohno TAcar Y(2023)The Use and Non-Use of Technology During HurricanesProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/36102157:CSCW2(1-54)Online publication date: 4-Oct-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3610215
Anand SArslan SChopra RKatti SVaddiraju MRana RSheng PTyagi HViswanath P(2022)Trust-free service measurement and payments for decentralized cellular networksProceedings of the 21st ACM Workshop on Hot Topics in Networks10.1145/3563766.3564093(68-75)Online publication date: 14-Nov-2022
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Rubambiza GSengers PWeatherspoon H(2022)Seamless Visions, Seamful Realities: Anticipating Rural Infrastructural Fragility in Early Design of Digital AgricultureProceedings of the 2022 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3491102.3517579(1-15)Online publication date: 29-Apr-2022
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Garrison PJang ELithgow MPace N(2021)"The Network Is an Excuse": Hardware Maintenance Supporting CommunityProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/34796085:CSCW2(1-20)Online publication date: 18-Oct-2021
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Tieanklin NJohnson MHeimerl K(2021)Poster: The Low Impact of COVID-19 on Rural Community Network TrafficProceedings of the 4th ACM SIGCAS Conference on Computing and Sustainable Societies10.1145/3460112.3472311(417-422)Online publication date: 28-Jun-2021
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Johnson MJang EO'Rourke FYe RHeimerl K(2021)Network Capacity as Common Pool ResourceProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/34491355:CSCW1(1-25)Online publication date: 22-Apr-2021
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3449135

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