The price of cellular infrastructure is dropping dramatically, entering the sub 10,000 USD price point in the last few years. This shift has enabled a new model of telephony, Community Cellular Networks, where local entrepreneurs operate their own independent networks in rural areas currently without coverage. In this talk, Dr. Heimerl will discuss Community Cellular Networks and the implementation of one such such network in the highlands of Papua, Indonesia.
Dr. Kurtis Heimerl is a postdoctoral researcher working under Prof. Eric Brewer in Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences and Prof. Tapan Parikh in the iSchool. His work focuses primarily on cellular systems and their intersection with international development. He won Best Paper at the CM SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI) for his work on kiosk-based crowdsoucing systems and won the community award at the 10th USENIX Symposium on Networked Systems Design and Implementation (NSDI) for his work on cellular systems for rural areas. He has also worked on the Metamouse group learning program. He received his Ph.D. from UC Berkeley last year.