ISLAMABAD – Dr Ihsan Ayyub Qazi, Associate professor of Computer Science,at Lahore University of Management and Technology (LUMS) conducted aresearch on “Facebook’s Free Basics” initiative that was shortlisted to bepresented at the SIGCOMM Conference 2018 to be held in Budapest, Hungary.
SIGCOMM is Special Interest Group on data communication which specializesin the field of communication and computer networks. SIGCOMM also organizesa conference in data communication and networking in the world.
LUMS’s Chair and an associate professor has been shortlisted to present theresearch paper at prestigious ACM SIGCOMM 2018 Conference. This is one ofthe two best papers that was chosen by ACM SIGCOMM Computer CommunicationsReview (CCR) Editorial Board. Dr. Qazi and two of his undergraduatestudents Shoaib Ahmed and Zaid A. Farooq worked with multiple internationalinstitutions to execute this project.
Dr. Qazi told, “This work also included two of my LUMS undergraduatestudents, Sohaib Ahmed and Zaid A. Farooq and was carried out incollaboration with colleagues from Northeastern University, Max PlanckInstitute for Software Systems (Germany), Univ. of Cape Town (SouthAfrica).”
He further told about the research facilities in LUMS by saying: *“Thesustained focus on research at LUMS played an important role in inspiringour work. LUMS has all the ingredients of a world-class University, whichincludes outstanding faculty, excellent students, highly supportive staffand administration, and a great working environment.”*
The Research of Dr. Qazi and his team is mainly focused on Facebook’s FreeBasics initiative. This initiative plans to bring affordable internetaccess to less developed countries by increasing efficiency andfacilitating the development of new business models that provide internetaccess. The Free Basics program has been discouraged and it’s been a matterof criticism in many countries as activists have concerns about, dataprivacy, data neutrality and unequal competition. This is why this programhas been banned in many countries including India and Egypt.
The research paper offers first detailed and empirical analysis of freeBasics architecture, its users, content and internet services providers byimplementing Free Basics services in three countries over a period of ninemonths.
Earlier in June, Dr. Qazi has also won the Google Faculty Research Awardfor their proposal on developing technologies to make internet web fasterfor users in developing countries.