Community Broadband Networks for Rural and Remote Indigenous Communities

When it comes to Internet access, Indigenous communities are among the most underserved throughout North America. According to Canada’s ISED, 97 percent of urban households have access to high-speed Internet, compared to only 37 percent in rural communities. The statistics are even more bleak for Indigenous communities, where just 24 percent have access to high-speed Internet.
The Internet Society works with Indigenous communities to find and implement sustainable solutions that meet their unique connectivity needs. Supporting communities to build and maintain local Internet infrastructure has proven to be key to connect the unconnected.
This talk will cover a recent partnership between the Internet Society and the National Research Council of Canada (NRC) that aimed at identifying and training a number of indigenous communities in Ontario and Northwest territories, in preparation for broadband network deployments.
Also, this talk will cover the successful deployment of a wireless broadband network in the indigenous community of Ulukhaktok in the Arctic, which would perhaps be the northern-most such deployment.

Dr. Hosein Badran: Dr. Hosein Badran holds the position of Senior Director, Internet Growth and Trust, with the Internet Society, based in Ottawa, Canada. He represents the Internet Society at the ITU-T standardization organization, particularly SG11, SG13 and SG17, and invited member of the Canadian ITU-T National Study Groups NSG11, NSG13 and NSG17. Special focus in the standardization work is on topics related to the evolution of the Internet - proposals potentially resulting in the fragmentation of the Internet, like NewIP and related proposals. He is a member of the North American Network Operators Group (NANOG) Education Committee, and the Canadian Forum for Digital Infrastructure Resilience (CFDIR), established by Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada (ISED). He is a co-author of the final report of the Canadian Multi-stakeholder Initiative on IoT Security: “Enhancing IoT Security: Final Outcomes and Recommendations”. He has been a member of the Steering Committee of the Arab IGF since its inception in 2010, overseeing the program content for the annual event, and was the Chair of the Program Committee of the Canadian IGF 2020. During his career of over 25 years as C-level expert, he spent 14 years with Cisco Systems as Distinguished Systems Architect and Regional Chief Technology Officer as a member of the Cisco CTO Office. Before joining the Internet Society, he spent three years as Director, Special Projects and Innovation, at Qatar Computing Research Institute (QCRI), a member of Qatar Foundation, in Doha, Qatar, where he led projects dealing with machine learning and data-driven optimization in different national socio-economic initiatives including smart transportation, e-health, aviation, and cybersecurity. He worked also with Nortel Networks in Ottawa, Canada, FORE Systems (now Ericsson) in Dubai, and Siemens AG in Munich, Germany. Dr. Badran holds a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Queen’s University in Canada.   / dr-hosein-f-badran-4b56941  

Speaker: Dr. Hosein Badran - Internet Society