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

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'.