The webinar shared the information on potential in 5G technological advancements and Blockchain to support sustainable communities. The talk highlighted the disparity between urban and rural communities in digitalization, especially in developing countries. The webinar discussed the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and key initiatives to attain a sustainable future for all. They brought together a reference model with the 5G key enablers, including Open RAN, Blockchain, Private Networks / Local Community Networks (LCNs) to provide resilient and affordable connectivity solutions. They proposed a novel BFT #Consensus algorithm called Proof of Connection (PoC) which has been specifically designed to support sustainable slicing.

The sessions also included presentations by alumni and M.Tech first year students of WNA. The M.Tech alumni Lakshmi Rajagopal, who currently is an early stage researcher at British Telecom at UK, shared her experiences in WNA during the master programme. The current M.Tech students Parvathy S S and Rahul KP discussed their learning outcomes with different courses offered in WNA, especially pointing to the Mobile Communication Network course. Two other M.Tech students, Tom Toby and Makarand Prabhu presented a demo on the importance of location services in dynamic 5G scenarios using Direction of Arrival (DoA) techniques. Towards the end of the session, Questions and Answers (QNAs) were addressed by Dr. Seshaiah Ponnekanti to the audience. Finally, Dhanesh Raj conveyed the vote of thanks.