# Closing Connectivity Gap: An Overview of Mobile Coverage Solutions for Not-Spots in Rural Zones
## 2 The Rural Paradigm Shift
### New Services  
A few years ago, trending services such as IoT and 5G were considered challenging to implement in rural areas, especially for Latin America because there were no considerations to grant a reliable and high-traffic supported backhaul network. Nevertheless, these paradigms would hook up dispersed nodes located in remote zones nowadays, with staggering downlink/uplink rates, aiming to accomplish the requirements for MTC and Narrowband Internet of Things (NB-IoT) [35].  
IoT promises to be a suitable technology for upgrading the countryside--a stable network may be guaranteed--following the massive number of connected things and the heterogeneous nature of IoT devices. On the other hand, there is the incursion of MTC application domains, such as agriculture management, transportation, logistics improvement, and crop automation, being one of the fastest-growing telecommunications technologies, especially in urban contexts [36]. LTE-based MTC addresses advantages in increasing capacity, traffic response, and spectral efficiency [37].  
Diverse strategies have arisen from assessing the most appropriate technologies to furnish high-speed broadband and to reach desired standards such as service speed and setting up at 30 Mbps in European rural areas. [PERSON] et al. in [38] stated that FTTdp (Distributed Point) solution using the G.fast standard is a cost-effective alternative to VDSL, which is the current widespread technology in Europe granting connectivity in the countryside. The authors acknowledge that FTTdP G.fast readily enables bandwidth upgrade, but the model is not cost-efficient in terms of investing in geographically sparse populations [16; 17].  
Consequently, LTE Fixed Wireless Access Networks (LTE FWA) could be an available, attainable solution, bearing in mind extensive LTE infrastructure in a significant rural part of the world. Regardless of whether newly emerged 5G standards are desirable for implementation, we can upgrade LTE FWA through the LTE-NR model, which creates a tight interaction between LTE and the new radio system. The also known model of E-UTRA-NR Dual connectivity--or EN-DC--allows benefits in aspects of user throughput in both low and high traffic load conditions [39].  
Foreseeing the inclusion of the services mentioned above, the design of internet access solutions should be engaged with the three main factors as the authors outlined in [40]:  
* Affordability --for avoiding undue hardships by employing reliable networks;
* Social shareability--to gain access through selfless (shared) connections;
* Geographical network coverage--where networks allow the user's mobility by themselves.  
Simultaneously, the requirements on ubiquitous coverage will not follow the one-size-fits-all standard to pursue a more connected rural society [41]. Figure 5 summarizes the information granted by the GSMA's reports [42; 43], which attempt to state the main driven innovations through an improved roll out in three foremost aspects:  
* BS infrastructure --far-flung from the traditional macrocells model;
* Backhaul planning--avoiding the higher cost of urban deployment;
* Energy--mixing up with renewable sources;
* Blue Sky solutions--although those remain at the proof-of-concept stage.  
These innovations will move beyond the traditional business model--such as _CapEx_--and local governments should create new regulation principles to harvest investment in network infrastructure.