As of 2022, about 2.78 billion people in developing countries do not have access to the Internet. Lack of Internet access hinders economic growth, educational opportunities, and access to information and services. Recent initiatives to ``connect the unconnected'' have either failed (project Loon and Aquila) or are characterized by exorbitant costs (Starlink and similar), which are unsustainable for users in developing regions. This paper proposes SONIC, a novel connectivity solution that repurposes a widespread communication infrastructure (AM/FM radio) to deliver access to pre-rendered webpages. Our rationale is threefold: 1) the radio network is widely accessible -- currently reaching 70% of the world -- even in developing countries, 2) unused frequencies are highly available, 3) while data over sound can be slow, when combined with the radio network, it takes advantage of its broadcast nature, efficiently reaching a large number of users. We have designed and built a proof of concept of SONIC which shows encouraging initial results.

翻译：截至2022年，发展中国家约有27.8亿人口无法接入互联网。互联网连接的缺失阻碍了经济增长、教育机会以及信息与服务的获取。近期旨在“连接未联网人群”的倡议要么已告失败（如Loon和Aquila项目），要么存在成本过高的问题（如Starlink及类似方案），这对于发展中地区的用户而言难以持续。本文提出SONIC，一种创新的连接解决方案，该方案通过改造广泛存在的通信基础设施（调幅/调频广播网络）来提供预渲染网页的访问服务。我们的设计基于三重考量：1）广播网络覆盖广泛——目前已覆盖全球70%的人口——即使在发展中国家亦如此；2）未使用频段资源高度可用；3）尽管声波数据传输速率有限，但结合广播网络可充分发挥其广播特性，从而高效触达海量用户。我们已完成SONIC概念验证系统的设计与构建，初步实验结果令人鼓舞。