Today, companies called service providers enable communications and control the related infrastructures. However, with increased computing power, advanced wireless technologies and more standardized terminals, users in the future will be able to take more control of communications. In this paper, we define and discuss a disruptive communication model called User-Assisted Communications (UAC), which allows users to assist other users to establish communications, and propose a method for managing trust and security, which are the most challenging variables in UAC and must be addressed before UAC can be implemented successfully. A Social Network based Trust Establishment (SN-TE) is proposed for UAC implementation.
Tong Zhou is an Interdisciplinary Ph.D. student of UMKC and works for Sprint Nextel as a Principal Engineer. He earned a Master’s degree in Electrical Engineering from the State University of New York at Stony Brook in 1998 and a Bachelor’s degree in Communications Engineering from Beijing Information Science & Technology University, China, in 1991. He received Sprint Annual Excellence Award in 2003. He is the inventor for three U.S. patents and has more than twenty patent applications pending in USPTO.