The role of community wireless networks in achieving digital inclusion: collective telecommunication infrastructures

Community Wireless Networks (CWNs) have emerged as collective projects built by community contributions to provide shared, affordable or free Internet access to community members. Community contributions include sharing access points, donating money and hardware, developing software for the system and/or providing manpower and technical expertise. CWNs provide a range of benefits that include achieving digital inclusion, accruing social capital and generating human capital. The diffusion of CWNs faces a number of challenges that include assessing socioeconomic outcomes, preventing misuse, engaging community members and adopting a successful business model. It is also important to place CWNs in a proper research stream, to categorize their factors and to craft an appropriate research approach. The primary objectives of this research study are exploring the role of CWNs in achieving digital inclusion and situating CWNs in a proper research stream. To achieve this task, this study describes CWNs as “value networks” and use graph theoretic approach to model and analyze their variables. We explore the role of CWNs in achieving digital inclusion. We address the role of CWNs in the creation of social capital and address the role of social capital in the creation of CWNs as well. Subsequently, we use the mentioned graph theoretic approach to analyze community contributions to building CWNs. Then, we delve into how to regulate CWNs using Quality of Service (QoS) and classify CWNs’ business models. The data is collected through a survey instrument, direct observation, panel discussions and simulation tools. The OPNET simulator is used to study the technical issues and UCINET to study their social issues. This study directs communities to rely on their resources and develop collective telecommunication infrastructures. It also assists researchers to study CWNs as a form of collective actions and value networks. In addition, the adopted graph-based analytical approach could be used to study similar digital collective actions such as developing wikis, open source software and online forums. We provide sufficient theoretical accounts and analytical details so that researchers and academicians could use them in their investigations. Finally, we hope this study contributes to the diffusion of CWNs as a practical solution to the digital inequality problem in addition to the commercial and public solutions. We also count on the study to guide academicians in order to advance this topic as a research stream.