A Cost Effective Solution for Broadband Internet Access in Rural and Mountainous Regions

While bandwidth for Internet access in urban areas is steadily increasing in recent years, some rural areas are still suffering from digital divide. This paper presents a broadband Internet access solution developed by the ADHOCSYS project, which is financed by the European Commission under the FP6 IST strategic objective “Broadband for All”. Aiming at providing reliable Internet access in rural and mountainous regions where xDSL is not available or non-profitable, the ADHOCSYS network provides a cost-effective solution based on multi-hop wireless networks. Starting from a general description of the network architecture and application scenarios, the paper presents various challenges and technical solutions which have been investigated within the project, including routing, QoS, power supply, and security. A real-life pilot ADHOCSYS network has been deployed in Northern Italy to validate the broadband access solution developed by the project.