TY - GEN
T1 - SONIC
T2 - 20th International Conference on Emerging Networking EXperiments, CoNEXT 2024
AU - Pandey, Ayush
AU - Asim, Rohail
AU - Mengal, Khalid
AU - Varvello, Matteo
AU - Zaki, Yasir
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2024 ACM.
PY - 2024/12/9
Y1 - 2024/12/9
N2 - As of 2022, about 2.78 billion people in developing countries do not have access to the Internet. Lack of Internet access hinders economic growth, educational opportunities, and access to information and services. Recent initiatives to "connect the unconnected"have either failed (project Loon and Aquila) or are characterized by exorbitant costs (Starlink and similar), which are unsustainable for users in developing regions. This paper proposes SONIC, a novel connectivity solution that repurposes a widespread communication infrastructure (AM/FM radio) to deliver access to pre-rendered webpages. Our rationale is threefold: 1) the radio network is widely accessible - currently reaching 70% of the world - even in developing countries, 2) unused frequencies are highly available, 3) while data over sound can be slow, when combined with the radio network, it takes advantage of its broadcast nature, efficiently reaching a large number of users. We have designed and built a proof-of-concept for SONIC, which shows encouraging initial results.
AB - As of 2022, about 2.78 billion people in developing countries do not have access to the Internet. Lack of Internet access hinders economic growth, educational opportunities, and access to information and services. Recent initiatives to "connect the unconnected"have either failed (project Loon and Aquila) or are characterized by exorbitant costs (Starlink and similar), which are unsustainable for users in developing regions. This paper proposes SONIC, a novel connectivity solution that repurposes a widespread communication infrastructure (AM/FM radio) to deliver access to pre-rendered webpages. Our rationale is threefold: 1) the radio network is widely accessible - currently reaching 70% of the world - even in developing countries, 2) unused frequencies are highly available, 3) while data over sound can be slow, when combined with the radio network, it takes advantage of its broadcast nature, efficiently reaching a large number of users. We have designed and built a proof-of-concept for SONIC, which shows encouraging initial results.
KW - developing regions
KW - fm radio
KW - world wide web
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85215977957&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85215977957&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1145/3680121.3697812
DO - 10.1145/3680121.3697812
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:85215977957
T3 - CoNEXT 2024 - Proceedings of the 20th International Conference on Emerging Networking EXperiments
SP - 41
EP - 47
BT - CoNEXT 2024 - Proceedings of the 20th International Conference on Emerging Networking EXperiments
PB - Association for Computing Machinery, Inc
Y2 - 9 December 2024 through 12 December 2024
ER -