Affordable NTN to Bridge the Digital Divide: A Case Study on Women Micro-Entrepreneurs

Publication Date

5-8-2025

Document Type

Conference Proceeding

Publication Title

Acmse 2025 Proceedings of the 2025 ACM Southeast Conference

DOI

10.1145/3696673.3723070

First Page

78

Last Page

84

Abstract

Non-Terrestrial Networks (NTNs) are rapidly coming up as a pivotal element in bridging the global connectivity divide. It provides a scalable and cost-effective solution to facilitate connectivity in rural areas. At the same time small and micro business are coming up as a viable platform for economic growth in developing countries. These small and micro business owners (micro-entrepreneurs) require some affordable internet connectivity to establish and run their business, which is important for the survival and growth of local economies. As setting up a mobile network infrastructure is very challenging in remote regions and developing nations, we propose to exploit NTNs for providing internet connectivity. After looking into the requirements of women micro-entrepreneurs, we develop a customized, low-bandwidth application platform to mimic the need of women micro-entrepreneurs and subsequently introduce a new user capacity planning. System level simulations are performed to point out the efficiency of NR-NTN and IoT-NTN in satisfying the connectivity requirements for more than 2,000 and 200 users. While NR-NTN provides a more efficient and better connectivity solution, IoT-NTN offers a more affordable solutions for women micro-entrepreneurs in Low and Medium Income Countries (LMIC) - thus assisting in bridging the 'digital divide'.

Keywords

Capacity, Cell throughput, Channel model, Internet of Things (IoT), Non-Terrestrial Networks, Women Micro-entrepreneurs

Department

Computer Science

Link to Full Text

Share

COinS