Dr. Shaddi Hasan
Abstract:
Over 400 million people live without access to basic communication services, largely in rural areas. Community-based networks, and particularly community cellular networks, can sustainably support services even in these extremely rural areas where commercial network operators cannot.
In this talk, I will identify key challenges these community cellular networks face for reaching scale, and present two approaches for addressing those challenges. The first, GSM Whitespaces, demonstrates that rural community cellular networks can safely share spectrum in bands occupied by incumbent mobile network operators, removing a key barrier to independent operation. The second, CCM, shows how community networks and incumbent mobile network operators can cooperate to share resources to extend service. We will explore each of these approaches through practical systems and longitudinal deployments of community cellular networks in Southeast Asia that provide service to thousands of rural people.
Bio:
Dr. Shaddi Hasan is a program manager at Facebook Connectivity. His research interests lie at intersection of ICTD, computer networks, and distributed systems. His work takes a human-centric approach to building scalable systems that provide equitable access to communications, especially in rural and developing regions, and has appeared in venues such as ICTD, SIGCOMM, NSDI, and IEEE DySPAN. Dr. Hasan received his PhD (2019) and MS (2015) from University of California, Berkeley, and his BS from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (2010). Prior to joining Facebook, he was a co-founder and CTO of Endaga, a startup focused on building systems to enable community cellular networks.
