On behalf of the organizing committee, I would like to welcome you all to the dynamic city of Hong Kong for the Forth International Conference on Access Networks (AccessNets), which will be held in Hong Kong on November 1-3, 2009. After Athens in 2006, Ottawa in 2007, and Las Vegas in 2008, this year AccessNets moves to Asia for the first time. It is my honor to serve as the General Chair.

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. The technical program of this year's AccessNets conference consists of keynote speeches from academia and telecom industry, an outstanding program of technical papers from the call-for-paper and invited speakers, and an excellent workshop. The keynote speeches will be given by Joseph Hui of Arizona State University and Geoffrey Yuen of PCCW. The IWATA workshop focuses on the advanced wireless access technologies for IMT-A.

I would also like to take this opportunity to thank all the organizing committee members for their hard work in organizing this event. Without their relentless support, this conference would not have been possible. In particular, I want to thank Yiqing Zhou for organizing an excellent workshop. I would also like to thank all the authors who have submitted their papers and contributed their recent work to this conference. Many thanks go to all the ICST staff for their professional support and assistance. Special thanks particularly go to Eszter Hajdu and Maria Morozova for their prompt responses to resolve many conference related issues. In addition, I would like to acknowledge ICST and Create-Net for their invaluable co-sponsorship for this event.

Hong Kong is a city of charm and well-known for a great variety of food, exciting shopping, and splendid sightseeing. It is also the gateway to southern China. I hope that you will enjoy the technical program and I am looking forward to welcoming you in Hong Kong.

Danny H.K. Tsang
AccessNets 2009 General Chair

Danny H.K. Tsang, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Hong Kong, China

Welcome to Hong Kong, China for ICST AccessNets 2009 which provides a forum to exchange ideas on all aspects of access networks. After employing a rigorous review process to ensure quality of the technical program, eighteen papers have been accepted and organized in a single-track program so that participants will not miss any presentation. These papers reflect research activities in access networks at the forefront, with topics covering a wide spectrum of access networks including FiWi, PONs, 4G, WiFi, WiMax, Cross-layer design, and cognitive radios. In addition, a special issue in IEEE System Journal will be dedicated to AccessNets’09 from which some papers will be selected and considered for inclusion in this special issue. We have contributors from over ten countries. AccessNets 2009 also features two keynote speeches by Professor Joseph Y. Hui, ISS Chair Professor, Arizona State University, and the founder of IXTech and IXSoft, Inc., and Dr. Geoffrey Yuen, VP, Emerging Technology, PCCW. A workshop focused on wireless access technologies for IMT-A will be held on the first day of the conference.

The technical program team did an excellent job in soliciting participation, coordinating the review process, and promoting the technical program. We would like to thank every one of them for taking leadership roles in organizing various aspects of the technical program. Another important component of the technical program is the reviewers who volunteered their time and professional expertise. We would also like to take this opportunity to thank each and every one of them. We would also like to acknowledge the support from the ICST staff in facilitating various logistics to make AccessNets 2009 a success. Last but not least, we would like to thank all of the authors and attendees.

Finally, on behalf of the entire TPC, we welcome you to AccessNets 2009, and we hope you will enjoy the technical program and get a chance to meet new friends and colleagues.

Nirwan Ansari, Pin-Han Ho, Vincent K.N. Lau
AccessNets 2009 TPC Co-Chairs