Towards Building a Community Cellular Network in the Philippines

Barela, Mary Claire; Blanco, Mae Sincere; Martinez, Philip; Purisima, Miguel Carlo L.; Heimer, Kurtis; Podolsky, Matthew; Brewer, Eric; Festin, Cedric Angelo M.

doi:10.1145/2909609.2909639

Cited by 7 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 2 publications

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“…Applied research has sought solutions to these digital divides, both in the form of community infrastructure (e.g. Barela et al., 2016) and the digital services tailored to Indigenous needs (e.g. Hearne, 2017; Winter and Boudreau, 2018).…”

Section: Digital Technologies Knowledge Politics and Indigeneitymentioning

confidence: 99%

The new knowledge politics of digital colonialism

Young¹

2019

Environ Plan A

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While the impacts of information and communication technologies (ICTs) on society have been extensively studied, the most nuanced research approaches continue to focus on urban geographies in the Global North. There remains a paucity of critical work that focuses on ICT use in Indigenous, rural, and Global South communities. This paper responds to that gap by critically examining how the introduction of ICTs within Indigenous communities can exert epistemic violence against local knowledge systems. It does so through a case study of ICT usage within an Inuit community in the Canadian Arctic. I use a combination of participant observation, archival research, and semi-structured interviews to ask how the introduction of ICTs is transforming knowledge politics that impact Inuit Qaujimaningit (IQ; Inuit knowledge). I find that digital engagement erodes key components of the IQ system, including social practices within Inuit communities, travel outside of the community, and experiential learning while outside of the community. These findings have implications for the study of global digital geographies, applied research within the area of ICT for development, and Indigenous engagements with emerging technologies.

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Section: Digital Technologies Knowledge Politics and Indigeneitymentioning

confidence: 99%

The new knowledge politics of digital colonialism

Young¹

2019

Environ Plan A

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“…As described in [5], we identified fourteen candidate sites along the east coast of Luzon, the largest island in the Philippines. Sites are "sitios" or "barangays" (local administrative units) located near or along the coast -remote enough to lack cellular network coverage but not so remote as to make the logistics of research infeasible.…”

Section: Context and Site Identificationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…As our second measure of household welfare, we calculate an asset wealth index using the first component of principal component analysis of 14 asset questions in the baseline household survey. 5 The first component is a reliable predictor of household socioeconomic status [16]. Several of our asset variables are categorical factor variables; thus, we follow the recommendation of Kolenikov and Angeles by using the polychoric correlation matrix in the principal component analysis [30].…”

Section: Household Survey Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Once activated, VBTS towers transmit to a 500-meter radius, though terrain often reduces the actual distance. This technology was adapted for the Philippines by a team of researchers from the University of the Philippines (UP), University of Washington, and University of California Berkeley [5], with the regulatory support of a national mobile network operator. This process included hardware procurement and fabrication, software design and integration, site selection, engineering and construction of towers and solar grids for VBTS boxes in these sites, working with a major telecommunications company and satellite connection providers, and mobilizing local communities to maintain a CCN.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Connecting Isolated Communities

Keleher

Barela

Festin

et al. 2020

Proceedings of the 2020 International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development

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What determines the success of community cellular networks? We leverage unique circumstances where all households in seven localities were interviewed before the launch of cellular networks. We observed substantial differences in network adoption across communities. Four communities displayed high and regular usage, while usage dissipated shortly after the network launch in three sites. Sixty-five percent of households made or received at least one call or text message. We find that a one standard deviation increase in household wealth is correlated with a three percentage point increase in network adoption and 43 additional cellular network transactions. Agricultural households were ten percentage points more likely to adopt the network than other households and femaleheaded households were five percentage points more likely to use the network at least once. CCS CONCEPTS• Applied computing → Economics; • Networks → Mobile networks.

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“…As such, the towers were locally targeted by design. Barela et al (2016) provides a thorough description of the VBTS Konekt Network technical design. The VBTS tower connects to a major Philippine mobile network operator's cellphone towers.…”

Section: Ccn Tower Installationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Community Cellular Networks: An Experimental Evaluation in the Philippines

Keleher¹,

Rezaee²,

Liang³

2019

AEA Randomized Controlled Trials

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Despite the rapid expansion of mobile coverage in the developing world, roughly 10% of the world's population still lives beyond the reach of a cell tower and all of the platforms, products, and services that cell towers make possible. This study investigates the impact of a new type of cellular connectivity designed specifically to address the "last mile" problem: the Community Cellular Network. Built on open-source technology first developed by researchers at UC Berkeley, the Community Cellular Network provides community-owned cellular infrastructure at one-tenth of the cost of traditional mobile towers.Our goal is to develop a deeper understanding of the social and economic impacts of first-time access to a cellular network in isolated communities in the Philippines. We use a two-stage randomized control trial in which we (i) randomly assign villages to receive or not receive a new cellphone tower; and (ii) within treated villages, randomize the price that households paid to access these networks. This pre-analysis plan describes how we plan to study the impacts of cellular access on social network structure, and several social and economic outcomes.

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Towards Building a Community Cellular Network in the Philippines

Cited by 7 publications

References 2 publications

The new knowledge politics of digital colonialism

The new knowledge politics of digital colonialism

Connecting Isolated Communities

Community Cellular Networks: An Experimental Evaluation in the Philippines

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