Bridging the Digital Divide: Success Depends on Content Provider and Application Developer Involvement

by A. Lappalainen and C. Rosenberg

Users in isolated, remote communities who rely on satellites to connect to the Internet are limited by long-latency and low-bandwidth connections, and their quality of experience lags far behind others, creating a digital divide. In this month’s opinion piece, the authors address why this digital divide is broadening and challenge the common belief that network operators are the only technical stakeholders responsible for bridging this divide. Indeed, as content providers and application developers (CPADs) adopt a greater diversity of protocols and applications, richer content, and wide-scale encryption, remote community operators (RCOs) have faced increased challenges to effectively manage the satellite link, widening the digital divide. The authors argue that CPADs must partner with RCOs by becoming active stakeholders in this problem. In particular, CPADs must commit to be more “remote-aware and friendly” by ensuring that the protocols and applications used to deliver content to remote users are light-weight in signaling and redundant data and make careful use of encryption in order to respect RCOs’ dependence on proxies and caching. Some CPADs may be receptive to this message and willing to help up front—indeed, some CPADs have previously provided solutions for specific contexts of the digital divide, e.g., in Africa—but, in general, such a request creates new constraints for them and hence, one cannot count on their good will alone. Therefore, the authors propose a framework in which a special remote status (controlled by the International Telecommunication Union) is granted to RCOs, and CPADs are mandated to use this status to identify remote communities and give them special treatment, either by providing dedicated solutions to these communities or by delivering content to them in ways that allow RCOs to continue relying on caching and proxies.

弥合数字鸿沟：成功取决于内容提供商和应用程序开发人员的参与

A.Lappalainen和C.Rosenberg

偏僻的偏远社区中依赖卫星连接到Internet的用户受到长时延和低带宽连接的限制，他们的体验质量远远落后于其他用户，从而造成了数字鸿沟。在本月的观点文章中，作者阐述了为什么这种数字鸿沟正在扩大，并挑战了普遍的观念，即网络运营商是唯一负责弥合这种鸿沟的技术利益相关者。的确，随着内容提供商和应用程序开发人员（CPAD）采用协议和应用程序的多样性，更丰富的内容以及广泛的加密功能，远程社区运营商（RCO）在有效管理卫星链路，扩大数字鸿沟方面面临越来越大的挑战。 。作者认为，CPAD必须成为RCO的积极参与者，才能与RCO合作。特别是，CPAD必须通过确保用于向远程用户传送内容的协议和应用程序在信令和冗余数据方面轻量级，并谨慎使用加密以遵守RCO，从而致力于更加“远程感知和友好”依赖代理和缓存。一些CPAD可能会接受此消息并愿意预先提供帮助-实际上，某些CPAD以前已经为数字鸿沟的特定上下文提供了解决方案，例如在非洲-但总的来说，这样的请求给他们带来了新的限制，并且因此，一个人不能指望他们的善意。因此，作者们提出了一个框架，其中向RCO授予特殊的远程状态（由国际电信联盟控制），