Session Date/Time: 04 Nov 2025 22:00

GAIA

Summary

The GAIA session featured three presentations covering diverse aspects of global connectivity and environmental sensing. Wesley Wu from Virginia Tech presented research on Starlink's capacity and affordability in bridging the digital divide, concluding that while Starlink can connect "anyone anywhere," it struggles to serve "everyone everywhere" due to capacity limitations, diminishing returns in remote areas, and affordability issues. Steve Song from the Internet Society introduced the Open Fiber Data Standard (OFDS), advocating for greater transparency in terrestrial fiber infrastructure to improve planning, reduce outages, and level the playing field for smaller operators, addressing cybersecurity concerns versus the "cost of obscurity." Finally, Eric Greenland from Georgia Tech discussed the co-design and deployment of "McCuck," an IoT sensor buoy, to support Ojibwe indigenous sovereignty and ecosystem health by monitoring wild rice habitats in the Great Lakes region, highlighting challenges in cellular connectivity, data actionability, and hardware sustainability in remote, co-managed spaces.

Key Discussion Points

Session Logistics and Note Well
- The session was recorded and transcribed. Participants were reminded to sign into Datatracker or use the QR code.
- Meetecho etiquette (audio/video off unless speaking) and the IETF "Note Well" policy regarding conduct, anti-harassment, patent disclosures, and privacy were reiterated.
- Chairs Curtis Heimel and Edesorin were unable to attend in person (Vietnam and Bangkok, respectively), with Jane acting as sole chair.
Starlink and the Digital Divide (Wesley Wu, Virginia Tech)
- Problem Statement: Starlink markets itself as a scalable solution to the digital divide, but the research evaluates this against the definition of "universal and meaningful connectivity" (reliable, useful, affordable for all people in all places). The study focused on the United States due to data availability.
- Capacity Analysis:
  - Wireless Channel Bottleneck: Starlink's reported ~4,000 MHz spectrum and ~4.5 bits/s/Hz efficiency yields ~17.3 Gbps per spot beam.
  - Demand Mismatch: Max demand in a single service area of unserved US locations is ~600 Gbps. This requires an oversubscription rate of ~35:1 or choosing not to serve all unserved locations.
  - Long Tail of Users: 99% of unserved service cells have fewer than 1,500 locations, 90% have fewer than 552. Serving the "long tail" introduces significant diminishing returns, disincentivizing Starlink from serving these populations.
  - Steerable Beam Bottleneck: Estimated 80,000 satellites initially required. With "beam spreading" (serving multiple areas with one beam, albeit with less bandwidth per cell), a more realistic estimate for serving all unserved US locations at a 20:1 oversubscription rate is ~40,000 satellites.
- Affordability Analysis:
  - Benchmark: Internet service should not cost more than 2% of monthly income (Alliance for Affordable Internet, UN, FCC benchmark).
  - Starlink Cost: Starlink's base plan ($120/month for 100/20 Mbps) is unaffordable for ~3.5 million out of 4.7 million unserved US locations based on median county income, even with existing Lifeline subsidies.
  - Comparison: Comparable plans from Xfinity ($40/month) and Spectrum ($50/month) are affordable in almost all (100% and 99.99% respectively) of these unserved locations.
- Conclusion: Starlink facilitates "anyone anywhere" but faces significant hurdles in achieving "everyone everywhere" with meaningful connectivity. Bridging the digital divide requires a multi-faceted approach involving novel technologies, new spectrum access models, infrastructure sharing, and municipal approaches.
- Discussion Points:
  - The analysis of underserved regions only included areas without existing ISP coverage.
  - Questions arose regarding why "denser" unserved cells (e.g., 5,000 people in a 250 sq km cell) weren't served by traditional providers, suggesting issues like poverty or specific geographical challenges.
  - The speaker was encouraged to extend affordability analysis to other countries, acknowledging Starlink's variable pricing but noting potential for even worse affordability ratios in lower-income regions.
  - The study used the $120/month plan as it guaranteed FCC-defined reliable broadband (100/20 Mbps), although cheaper Starlink plans (e.g., $50/month roaming) exist but offer less consistent performance.
  - The concept of "contention ratio" was raised in relation to meaningful connectivity, suggesting that quality of service degrades significantly beyond a certain user threshold per bandwidth.
Open Fiber Data Standard (OFDS) (Steve Song, Internet Society)
- Motivation: While undersea cable data is public (e.g., Telegeography), terrestrial fiber data is highly opaque, hindering planning and investment. Some operators share data (Unity, Dark Fiber Africa, RETN), others don't (citing competitive advantage or security).
- Challenges with Existing Data: Publicly available fiber maps vary greatly in accuracy, detail (missing Points of Presence), date, format, and lack validation, making them unusable for analysis or integration. ITU data is often under NDA.
- OFDS Solution: An open data standard and common framework for describing terrestrial fiber optic networks, co-chaired by ITU and World Bank, with input from operators.
- Benefits:
  - Governments/Regulators: Smarter investments, regional benchmarking, improved planning, reduced infrastructure disruptions, clearer understanding of network resiliency (distinguishing owned vs. leased capacity).
  - Operators (especially small): Levels the playing field, fosters trust for data sharing, enables shared tools for monitoring and analysis.
  - Analogy: Similar to the General Transit Feed Specification (GTFS) which standardized transit data for mapping apps.
- Technical Aspects: Uses JSON schema, meticulously documented, supported by open-source validation and conversion tools (e.g., Excel to GeoJSON). Covers fiber roots, infrastructure characteristics (capacity, strands, quality), and administrative data. Currently focuses on backhaul/middle mile, with intent to extend to last mile.
- Data Sovereignty: Operators retain ownership and control, sharing subsets via APIs or regulators as they see fit. Consolidated datasets could feed global maps.
- Internet Society's Role: Secretariat for OFDS, seeking a home for the standard (ideally IETF, but also ITU-T given regulatory constituency), building a community around it, developing software tools (e.g., QGIS plugin), and promoting broadband mapping.
- Cybersecurity vs. Cost of Obscurity:
  - Acknowledged legitimate security concerns but argued that the cost of obscurity is often higher. Overwhelmingly, undersea cable disruptions are accidental (seismic, anchor drags), not malicious.
  - Lack of transparency increases restoration costs (e.g., MTN Ghana's 939 cuts in 5 months).
  - Public evidence from operators who publish maps (like RETN in Ukraine) suggests it's not a significant security risk in practice.
  - Emphasized that it's both an open standard (common language) and open data; the need for a common language is unassailable even if data sharing remains selective.
- Discussion Points:
  - Some governments explicitly refuse to share data, citing national security or competitive concerns, making dialogue difficult.
  - Many carriers lack accurate internal maps of their own fiber, sometimes relying on Google Earth or having inherited undocumented infrastructure. Crowdsourcing data could help initiate conversations and provoke operators to release more accurate information.
  - There is interest from large continental fiber operators in sharing data, seeing the benefits.
McCuck: A Co-designed Sensor Buoy for Manoomin Health and Tribal Sovereignty (Eric Greenland, Georgia Tech)
- Context: Focused on the Great Lakes region, working with Ojibwe people whose culture, diet, and ecosystem health are deeply tied to Manoomin (wild rice). Manoomin is a keystone species but faces threats from climate change and local land/water use (e.g., mining tailings, salt, silt, invasive species).
- Strong Manoomin Collective: A consortium of academics, tribal partners, and land stewards dedicated to Manoomin conservation. This work supports Ojibwe indigenous sovereignty by protecting treaty rights for hunting, fishing, and gathering.
- Values: Centering relationships, drawing on both Western scientific knowledge and traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) for environmental insights.
- McCuck Sensor (The Sensor Buoy): A low-cost, co-designed IoT water quality sensor to understand the conditions Manoomin experiences.
  - Sensing Capabilities: Air/water temperature, water level (via pressure difference), humidity, acceleration, conductivity, turbidity, dissolved oxygen, and sound (for plant/animal interactions).
  - Connectivity: Particle platform (cellular network), local Bluetooth for direct access (crucial for field validation), SD card backup, solar charging, GPS location.
  - Design Goals: Easy to deploy and use by non-technical partners, low-cost (parts and experience), supports remote applications to reduce travel.
  - Development: Iterative process over multiple seasons, starting with fieldwork shadowing, then pilot deployments (8 sensors in Year 1, 20 in Year 2).
- Use Cases:
  - Triage: Human-in-the-loop sensing – sensors flag anomalous values, directing partners to take higher-quality physical samples.
  - Enforcement: Providing real-time trends (e.g., motorboat damage) to tribal police/wardens for regulation enforcement.
  - Policy/Accountability: Long-term data supports policy setting and holding entities accountable for environmental impacts (e.g., lawsuits).
  - Science/Exploration: Microclimate studies, understanding wild rice diseases, general environmental exploration.
- Deployment Challenges:
  - Cellular Connectivity: Significant issue in remote areas (up to 1/3 of sensors couldn't connect). A need for tools to predict or assess connectivity accurately on-site.
  - Data Accessibility/Actionability: Online dashboard not widely used; partners are over-constrained. Need easier ways to integrate data into daily workflows and make it actionable.
  - Hardware: Assembly, sustainability in harsh environments, managing diverse requirements for multiple partners and scalability issues for individual deployments.
- Insights: Successfully integrated TEK into technical design, emphasized data sovereignty (partners control exactly what data is shared with whom), the challenge of building consensus among multiple organizations, and ongoing work to evaluate the utility of IoT sensing.
- Discussion Points:
  - LoRaWAN: Considered as an alternative for connectivity but concerns about gateway maintenance (requires dedicated person), realistic range in the field, and ability to service multiple sensors were raised.
  - Tribal Approval: The process for gaining approval varies widely among Indigenous nations, from immediate acceptance for pressing issues to formal presentations to government councils. Success hinged on developing relationships, finding a "champion" within the tribal natural resources department, and a cooperative process. Generally positive experiences as long as baseline standards were followed.

Decisions and Action Items

No formal IETF decisions or action items were made during this GAIA session. The session served as a platform for sharing research and ongoing work.

Next Steps

GAIA Research Group: The GAIA leadership will be revising the RFC. Addisorne (Thailand) will be assisting in leading the next IETF meeting in China.
Starlink Research (Wesley Wu): Future work includes estimating current Starlink oversubscription rates, defining impact thresholds for degraded service, refining constellation size models for higher fidelity, identifying optimal low-cost access technologies for remote areas, and assessing costs for meaningfully subsidized nationwide internet service.
Open Fiber Data Standard (Steve Song): The Internet Society will continue its secretariat role, working to find a suitable home for the OFDS (IETF, ITU-T), building community engagement, and developing software tools like a QGIS plugin.
McCuck Sensor (Eric Greenland): Future efforts will focus on addressing cellular connectivity challenges, improving data accessibility and actionability for tribal partners, enhancing hardware sustainability for long-term deployments, and scaling the deployment and management processes. Continued focus on integrating TEK and ensuring data sovereignty.