Reducing internet access costs for community networks

摘要

An important aspect in providing Internet access is the cost for both fronthaul as well as backhaul connectivity, ultimately providing the access to the wider Internet content and services to the local community. The proliferation of media-rich content has led to a dramatic increase of backhaul costs, while creating pinching points in the often also limited fronthaul network that faces the end users. This is particularly dramatic for those deployments that rely on already expensive backhaul technologies, such as satellite, as well as limited fronthaul capacities. This paper will lay out the main cost drivers for content provisioning and how to address them through three major innovations, focusing our presentation on the aspect of cooperative off-peak time caching in the fronthaul network. We will outline a solution for addressing these challenges together with efforts related to a first proof-of-concept recently presented to the ETSI standards community.