************************************************************************** CALL FOR PAPERS 1st Workshop on Wireless Broadband Access for Communities and Rural Developing Regions

Co-located at 1st International Conference on "M4D" - Mobile Communication Technology for Development", http://m4d.humanit.org/ December 11-12, 2008, Karlstad University, Sweden

Sponsored by E-CLIC (EU-regional funds) **************************************************************************

Broadband internet access is at present available only to a small portion of the world's population, and there is a significant penetration discrepancy not only between different countries but also between different regions and areas within a given country. In addition, there is a growing interest on the local community and municipal levels to get broadband wireless access, but the number of options regarding network and service providers, as well as price and usage plans, is severely limited. However, affordable broadband for all is a key requirement to bridge the digital divide and to bring sustainable development to rural and developing regions as well as to support communities and municipalities. Today, existing technologies and plans for broadband access fail to address key challenges in terms of cost, deployment, or power consumption in order to bring broadband internet access to sparsely populated rural areas or to the masses of developing countries. While the focus of the general M4D conference is on multi-disciplinary research addressing the social, political, cultural and educational barriers to bringing ICT into developing regions, this workshop focuses on the technical and economical aspects of enabling (broadband) wireless internet access for rural and developing areas, as well as supporting communities and municipalities. The goal is to bring together researchers and practitioners and to serve as a forum for presenting and discussing state of the art research, exchanging ideas and experiences, and facilitating interaction and collaboration. Therefore, we are encouraging contributions including but not limited to topics listed below:

* Cost-effective Rural, Urban and Community Wireless and Mesh Networks * Long distance and low power wireless network deployments * Power-Efficient Wireless Networks and Mobile Systems * Opportunistic Communication Paradigms * Social Networks meet Wireless * Planning and Deployment of Community and Municipality Wireless Networks * Business Models and Economics of Community and Rural Wireless Networks * Applications and Services for Communities, Cross-layer design for localized communication * Case Studies and Testbeds

Submission Instructions Prospective authors are encouraged to submit a PDF version of an extended abstract (maximum of 1000 words, in English) of their contribution to wireless4d@kau.se by no later than September 30th, 2008. Authors of accepted papers are expected to present their paper at the workshop and register at regular registration rates. The submitted final written material can be in the form of either a regular conference paper (10 pages maximum, single-spaced) or in the form of a slide presentation/ poster. Accepted contributions will be part of the M4D conference proceedings either as full paper or as the extended abstract and published on this website after the conference. Participants will present their contributions as either talks (max. 20 minutes) or poster presentations

Important dates Abstract submission due: September 30th 2008 Acceptance Notification: October 31st, 2008 Camera ready manuscripts due: November 15, 2008 Workshop date: December 11-12, 2008

Workshop Chair Andreas J. Kassler, Karlstad University, Sweden

Program Committee: Rui Aguiar, University of Aveiro, Portugal Stefano Avallone, University of Naples, Italy Suman Bannerjee, University of Wisconsin, USA Elisabeth M. Belding, UC Santa Barbara, USA Yahel Ben-David, Air Jaldi, India Giuseppe Bianchi, University of Rome, Italy Matteo Cesana, Politecnico di Milano, Italy Nicolas Chevrollier, TNO, Netherlands Carla Fabiana Chiasserini, Politechno di Torino, Italy Jon Crowcroft, University of Cambridge, UK Mischa Dohler, CTTC, Spain Per Gunningberg, Uppsala University, Sweden Edward Knightley, Rice University, USA Ibrahim Körpeoglu, Bilkent University, Turkey Prasant Mohapatra, UC Davis, USA Edmundo Monteiro, University of Coimbra, Portugal Jörg Ott, Helsinki University of Technology, Finland Sergio Palazzo, University of Catania, Italy Tapan Parikh, UC Berkeley, USA Pedro M. Ruiz, University of Murcia, Spain Rahul Tongia, CMU, USA Yan Zhang, Simula Research, Norway