With the rapid growth of the Internet as well as the increasing demand for broadband services, access networks have been receiving growing investments in recent years. This has led to a massive network deployment with the goal of eliminating the bandwidth bottleneck between end-users and the network core. Today many diverse technologies are being used to provide broadband access to end users. The architecture and performance of the access segment (local loop, wired and wireless access networks, and even home networks) are getting increasing attention for ensuring quality of service of diverse broadband applications. Moreover, most access lines will no longer terminate on a single device, thus leading to the necessity of having a home network designed for applications that transcend simple Internet access sharing among multiple personal computers and enable multimedia support. Therefore, the access network and its home portion have become a hot investment pool from both a financial as well as a research perspective.

The aim of the annual International Conference on Access Networks (AccessNets) is to provide a forum that brings together scientists and researchers from academia as well as managers and engineers from the industry and government organizations to meet and exchange ideas and recent work on all aspects of access networks and how they integrate with their in-home counterparts. AccessNets’08 is the third edition of this exciting event, which will be held in Las Vegas, USA, in October 2008. The conference will consist of technical sessions, workshops, and panels. The technical sessions will present original and fundamental research advances while the workshops and panels will focus on development, application, and related business issues in this hot and exciting area.