Query: internet access in remote areas

title: Barriers to Telehealth Uptake in Rural, Regional, Remote Australia: What Can Be Done to Expand Telehealth Access in Remote Areas?
abstract: Telehealth using high quality satellite internet has been shown to improve health service delivery in three very remote Aboriginal communities, however, further expansion of telehealth in this and other areas of the Northern Territory (NT) is limited by the lack of adequate internet. Despite the growing evidence of the benefits of telehealth there remains limited uptake in the NT in the primary health care sector. A national survey through Broadband for the Bush Alliance (B4BA) and its member organisations into consumers' experiences of telecommunications and telehealth services was done. The survey was supported by detailed case studies based on semi structured interviews. It was found there were a number of barriers to telehealth uptake at the national level: Lack of adequate internet; consumers not being aware of, or knowing how, to access telehealth; lack of access to clinicians providing telehealth services; lack of Medicare item numbers for telehealth and the lack of resourcing at the patient end. The research indicated there needs to be investment into telecommunications infrastructure, public education about telehealth, an increase in Medicare telehealth item numbers and resourcing for primary health care services to support telehealth expansion particularly in rural, regional and remote areas.

title: Evaluation of access technology to speed up Internet penetration in remote areas, case study: Community access point in Regency of Garut, West Java, Indonesia
abstract: Rural and remote areas in developing countries represent a market with potential in growth of internet users. Yet, the access technology to rural areas remains a major problem. For this study, Regency of Garut in West Java, Indonesia was chosen to represent a high population density of rural areas for a techno economic analysis on providing internet access to users with typical characteristics of those who will constitute the rural users. While previous study shows that internet penetration rates increases with GDP, telephone penetration, and PC penetration in developing regions, in this study penetration of internet is estimated to boost GDP and PC penetration of rural and remote areas, so as to solve the chicken egg problem. Various fixed and mobile data technologies were evaluated and compared (DSL, VSAT, UMTS, and HSPA) in order to speed up internet penetration. The study produces technology and regulatory assessment to boost internet penetration rate to rural areas.

title: The Use of Applications in Distance Education Specialization Course as a Support Tool for Students Living in Remote Areas Without Internet
abstract: The world is experiencing the popularization of mobile devices. This was made possible by the increasing technological advances and the advent of the Internet as a communication and information tool. These facts demonstrate that the development of applications compatible with such devices is an effective way to provide content to diverse audiences. In the educational field, these devices can be seen as technological support artifacts for distance education, serving as strategy for continuous and permanent education for health professionals. The Open University of Brazilian National Health System (UNA SUS) offers distance learning courses, including specializating on free access. In order to increase the public reach, UNA SUS developed mobile applications as supporting material for students. These applications can be accessed in offline mode, increasing the accessibility and therefore, improving the efficiency of the material. The 28 applications developed with responsive online books format currently reached the milestone of over 6,000 downloads. This number shows the positive acceptance of the format used, accentuated by the ease of having material downloaded from the device, not requiring the user to be connected to access content.

title: Improving access to information for nursing staff in remote areas: the potential of the Internet and other networked information resources
abstract: This paper reports on a research project which explored the potential of the Internet and other networked information resources to improve access to information for trained nurses working in the remote Western Isles of Scotland. The project was carried out by a multidisciplinary team including a community nurse working in the Western Isles, a nurse educator, an information provider and two information science researchers. Funding was provided jointly by the Scottish Library and Information Council (SLIC) and the ational Board for Nursing, Midwifery and Health Visiting Scotland (NBS) Results show that the Internet does have considerable potential to improve access to information for nurses in remote areas. However, at that time, key improvements to the nursing information on the Internet were required. Results also reveal a low awareness amongst nursing staff of important nursing information resources and a lack of information seeking skills. The paper concludes by saying that although improving access to information is important, what is also important in the first instance is creating an awareness that access to information is both necessary and relevant.

title: HotSel: A Hot Spot Selection Algorithm for Internet Access in Rural Areas through Nanosatellite Networks
abstract: Nowadays, to benefit from Internet access is so easy in some areas of the world as difficult in others. There are some different projects whose purpose is to extend Internet access to areas which do not have it yet. Each of these projects has unique characteristics that distinguish it from others (different transmission channels, different devices used, \dots) One possible solution provides the use of a particular type of satellites called nanosatellites. Using these devices, we can have a solution to extend the network access in rural and remote areas which offers a good balance among performances, security and costs. In a network of this type ground stations (called hot spots) are deployed, which upload data destined to rural areas on nanosatellites and download data destined to Internet servers from nanosatellites. During a data connection, an Internet server that wants to reply to a request coming from a rural area has many hot spot alternatives to whom it can deliver data. The problem of choosing the `optimal' hot spot becomes important because a wrong choice could lead to a high delivery delay. We propose `HotSel' a hot spot selection algorithm able to minimize data delivery time. HotSel is simple and practical, and outperforms two other selection mechanisms used as comparison. All results have been collected by using Network Simulator 3 (NS3) and developing a module able to simulate a nanosatellite network.

title: CDL based Channel Model for 5G MIMO Systems in Remote Rural Areas
abstract: In the fifth generation (5G) mobile networks, it is expected that users experience high throughputs with an ultra low latency network, while a massive number of devices are connected to the network. However, in remote rural areas, there is still a large number of people that do not have access to Internet broadband. To overcome this issue, a possible strategy is to exploit the excellent propagation conditions of very high frequency (VHF) and ultra high frequency (UHF) bands by allowing a secondary spectrum reuse in the TV white space (TVWS) channels. But for that, a reliable channel model is required to perform valid coverage and capacity prediction studies. In this paper, a channel model is proposed that takes into account large and small scale fading effects, as well as the particularities of such remote rural areas. The proposed model is simple to implement and can be used to provide fast link level and system level simulations. Numerical simulations are provided to validate the model and a capacity evaluation is done considering single input single output (SISO) and different multiple input multiple output (MIMO) configurations.

title: Towards Energy Neutral Wireless Communications: Photovoltaic Cells to Connect Remote Areas
abstract: In this work, we have designed, developed and deployed the world's first optical wireless communication (OWC) system using off the shelf lasers and solar photovoltaics. Four bidirectional OWC prototypes have been installed on the Orkney Islands of Scotland at a 30 m link distance for the provision of high speed internet access to two residential properties. The silicon made solar panels can harvest power up to 5 W from sunlight and they offer data rates as high as 8 Mb/s. Using additional analogue processing, data rates higher than the existing landline broadband connection are achieved. This breakthrough opens the development path to low cost, self powered and plug and play free space optical (FSO) systems.

title: Internet Access Using Ethernet over PDH Technology for Remote Area
abstract: There was still is gap among people living in city and in remote area to get information access, especially who lived in the Eastern part of Indonesia. People living in such remote area usually were isolated from town by natural condition like rivers, valleys, hills and so on. Therefore, telecommunication infrastructure for remote area using cooper was not effective and efficient way to build. The issue was how information and communication technology could penetrate such areas. This research aimed to propose technology that could be implemented to overcome the difficulties. Ethernet over Plesiochronous Digital Hierarchy (EoPDH) was one of many techniques that provided Ethernet connectivity over non Ethernet networks. EoPDH was a standardized methodology for transporting native Ethernet frames over the existing established PDH transport technology. To provide last milefor the local people, use of Mesh Wireless Local Area Network was made and connected to internet gateway via Ethernet over PDH based microwave radio link. The test showed that The Ethernet frames were successfully transported to remote area with good quality of service such as throughput, response time, and transaction rate.

title: Digital access, choice and agency in remote Sarawak
abstract: Internet use and access to digital devices continues to increase even in remote regions around the world, but users do not participate equally or engage in the same practices online. This leads to inequalities in the outcomes different groups of users can generate as a result of their online practices. Drawing from recent literature on digital divides and using a theoretical framework focused on user choice and agency, we present data from a study of internet and device use in remote villages in Sarawak, a state of Malaysia on the island of Borneo. These villages lack most basic infrastructure such as paved roads or grid electricity, but some have mobile phone and mobile internet access installed under Malaysia's Universal Service Provision. We discuss qualitative and quantitative data collected between 2015 and 2017 to point to the opportunities as well as obstacles users in remote communities encounter in their engagements with digital devices and the internet. We argue that while remote areas seem to lag behind urban areas in terms of users' internet skills and practices, people choose to engage with these technologies in ways that are appropriate to their needs and to the local low bandwidth environment. To enable these communities to tap into additional potential benefits of internet use, however, faster and more reliable access is a prerequisite.

title: Performance Analysis of a 5G Transceiver Implementation for Remote Areas Scenarios
abstract: Fifth generation of mobile communication networks will support a large set of new services and applications. One important use case is the remote area coverage for broadband Internet access. This use case has significant social and economical impact, since a considerable percentage of the global population living in low populated area does not have Internet access and the communication infrastructure in rural areas can be used to improve agrobusiness productivity. The aim of this paper is to analyze the performance of a SG transceiver for Remote Areas, implemented on field programmable gate array based hardware for real time processing. This transceiver employs the latest digital communication techniques, such as generalized frequency division multiplexing waveform combined with 2 by 2 multiple input multiple output diversity scheme and polar channel coding. The performance of the prototype is evaluated regarding its out of band emissions and bit error rate under AWGN channel.