Challenges and Opportunities in Community Cellular Networks

2020 CROSS Research Symposium Keynote

Wednesday, October 7, 2020

1:00pm-1:50pm

Abstract: Community Cellular Networks (CCNs) are small-scale cellular networks built on open-source technologies, managed by the communities they serve, and often used to bring Internet and telecommunications services into rural areas that are not served by traditional, large-scale incumbent providers. In this talk I will cover how CCNs differ from traditional cellular networks in terms of software and network architecture, provide interesting details of two ongoing CCNs in Indonesia and Mexico, and outline fruitful research questions and future work in the space of CCNs.

Bio: Spencer Sevilla is a Research Scientist in the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Washington, where he runs the Community LTE Project and works on expanding global Internet access via a wide range of technologies that center around community-owned network infrastructure. Spencer has been awarded fellowships by the University of California and Amazon Catalyst, been profiled by GeekWire and Seattle Magazine, and won third prize in the Mozilla Wireless Innovations for a Networked Society (WINS) Challenge for his work on open-source telecom. Spencer is a proud banana slug, and did his PhD at the University of Santa Cruz, where he was advised by J.J. Garcia-Luna-Aceves.