Page 117 - ITU Kaleidoscope 2016

5G IN RURAL AND LOW-INCOME AREAS: ARE WE READY?

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Luca Chiaraviglio, 1,2 Nicola Blefari-Melazzi, 1,2 William Liu, Jairo A. Gutierrez, Jaap Van De Beek, 4
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Robert Birke, Lydia Chen, Filip Idzikowski, Daniel Kilper, Paolo Monti, Jinsong Wu, 9
1) CNIT, Italy, 2) University of Rome Tor Vergata, Italy, 3) AUT, New Zealand, 4) Lulea University of Technology, Sweden,
5) IBM Research, Switzerland, 6) Faculty of Electronics and Telecommunications, Poznan University of Technology, Poland
7) The University of Arizona, USA, 8) KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden, 9) University of Chile, Chile
ABSTRACT rural and low-income ones. Specifically, users located in
urban areas have the possibility to connect to the Internet
Current trends in telecommunication networks foresee the
by means of WiFi, radio access, fixed access and satellite
adoption of the fifth generation (5G) of wireless networks
connections. In this context, telecom manufacturers and
in the near future. However, a large number of people are
researchers are focused on the development of the forthcom-
living without coverage and connectivity. To face this issue,
ing 5G technologies, which will be available by 2020. 5G
we consider the possibility of deploying 5G networks in ru-
standards are currently investigated by several organizations
ral and low-income zones. After detailing the current state-
around the world, including partnerships (such as 5G Pub-
of-the-art, we consider the main challenges that need to be
lic Private Partnership in Europe, IMT-2020 5G Promotion
faced. Moreover, we define the main pillars to follow in order
Group in China, The Fifth Generation Mobile Communica-
to deploy 5G networks in such zones, as well as a proposal
tions Promotion Forum in Japan, 5G Forum in Korea, and
of a future network architecture.
5G Americas) and international events. These efforts aim to
Index Terms— 5G networks, rural and low-income zones, build 5G networks that will dramatically improve the user
future Internet, global connectivity experience, thanks to a sharp increase in the offered data
rates, coupled also with extremely low latency times. In this
way, services like very high definition video, tactile Internet,
1. INTRODUCTION
virtual reality and Internet of Things will be made available.
The first experiment on the Arpanet (the father of the cur- 5G has several advantages for the spreading of the Internet
rent Internet) took place on 29th October 1969, with a sim- connectivity (see examples in the white paper of 5G-PPP
ple login message exchanged in a network composed of four [5]). Among them, the network introduces a high level of
nodes. Since then, telecommunication networks have incred- flexibility, which was otherwise not possible with previous
ibly grown, with distributed architectures connecting billions technologies. Thanks to this advantage, it is possible to de-
of users. Today, the Internet is considered as a commodity to- ploy services and network resources where and when they
gether with energy, water, and food. According to the recent are really needed. In addition, 5G foresees the exploitation of
study presented in [1], the Internet is the world’s most pow- commodity hardware, which opens the way to the develop-
erful engine for social and economic growth, and it needs to ment of software solutions implementing networking func-
be open, secure, trustworthy, and accessible to all. In this tions, and potentially decreasing the costs of installing and
scenario, the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) maintaining devices. Finally, 5G has introduced the concept
has reported that 69% of the world population is covered by of ”converged solution”, where the networks and the services
the third generation (3G) network [2], which allows users to cooperate to deliver high bandwidth and extremely low delay
connect with the Internet. Moreover, the penetration rate of to users.
the Internet in North America is above 80% [3]. However, Even though 5G introduces several positive aspects, the rel-
these numbers are hiding the dark side of telecommunication evant technologies are ”urban” in their nature. Specifically,
networks, which is the lack of connectivity and/or coverage the high performance requirements are made possible by
experienced by a large number of people, in the non-coverage an extremely rich and complex architecture, including: het-
areas, especially rural and low-income ones. Such zones in- erogeneous networks of macro and small cells, fronthaul
clude both low-density regions, but also towns/cities where and backhaul transport networks, small computing nodes
the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is extremely low. To this deployed close to the users, and large data centres. The
end, at least two billion people are currently experiencing a current models of telecommunication networks, which are
complete lack of wireless cellular coverage [4], thus prevent- business and profit oriented, suggest that 5G networks will
ing them to connect with the rest of the world. be mainly deployed in extremely dense urban zones, where
Given this picture, a natural question is: why are there such the number of subscribers is sufficiently high to compensate
differences in connectivity and coverage rates across the the installation and management costs of the 5G network.
world? One initial observation is that the telecommunication On the contrary, rural and low-income zones are less de-
networks are widely deployed in urban zones rather than in sirable and attractive for operators, since the extremely low

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