Vanu Replacing Cell Tower Equipment With PCs

Dwight Schwartz writes "As reported in an article on the ScienceDaily site, researchers from Vanu, Inc. of Cambridge, MA, have successfully tested a system, the Vanu Software Radio(tm), that can replace a cellular tower's room full of communications hardware with a Pentium-based computer running Linux. The system offers the hope of making cellular technology more affordable for small, rural communities." The systems have been tested for the last several months in parts of Texas, with wider adoption planned for the near future.

Comments

Finally.

[digitalunity]

This is actually *newsworthy*. I was starting to have withdrawls.

This should have a big impact on small towns where expensive cellular equipment isn't cost effective.

Affordability for rural people!

[commie_pig]

This is excellent. I live in South Africa, and there is a massive gulf between the poor and the few rich - this will help to connect all the poor people, and especially the ones in rural areas.

What makes me the happiest of all, is that the system runs Linux, and this is great in the light of the fact that the South African government has articulated its commitment to open source software (they have indicated that they may replace several government systems with Linux boxes! so I hope that it happenes)

It just shows what a bit of ingenuity can do.

Re:Affordability for rural people!

[lanswitch]

Cool. Great.
Now my boss can call me even when I'm on safari...

Re:Affordability for rural people!

[Anonymous Coward]

>This is excellent. I live in South Africa, and there is a massive gulf between the poor and the few rich

Just like Dubya's goal for America!

Re:Affordability for rural people!

[Anonymous Coward]

I live in South Africa, and there is a massive gulf between the poor and the few rich

I think you mean between black and white.

If all negroes were expelled from the country, such a dichotomy would not exist.

shed some light?

[mOoZik]

How can a single Pentium-based computer handle the bandwidth of many simultaneous calls? Does it merely act as a router or as something more? I ask because the article wasn't clear.

Re:shed some light?

[Gordonjcp]

How can a single Pentium-based computer handle the bandwidth of many simultaneous TCP/IP connections?

GSM is pretty low-bandwidth stuff (around 13kbps). Further, the line cards handle a lot of the framing and general cookery for the interconnects (whether it's a wired E1, or microwave, or whatever). So even a fairly low-end Pentium would handle a few calls. The article does say that it needs a fairly large Linux server, but an ordinary PC would work for a relatively small node. The Digitalk telephone switches we use are really just dual PII-500 machines, and they handle 120 simultaneous wired calls.

Re:shed some light?

[Anonymous Coward]

The article seems to basically be saying "we've reduced the amount of kit you need to run a cell" - I'm sure it just removes a tiny portion of the kit needed to set one up though. The article mentions that previously emergency and public calls used separate kit, and that this system uses a PC instead.

So, my bets are: it's replacing a bunch of routers by becoming a software-based router itself, and doesn't handle calls, but merely switches between networks based on call type. All of the other equipment in the cell will still be required. So in essence it reduces the cost, but by no means reduces a cell node to one PC with an aerial sticking out of it.

Re:shed some light?

[silentbozo]

So the linux boxes are cheap. What about the interconnect equipment? Can a guy off the street spend a few hundred and build his own phone network, or is the marginal cost still significant?

Hell, if it's cheap enough, I'll start my own wireless phone company :)

Re:shed some light?

[Anonymous Coward]

normally a Linux computer serving static http traffic can easily saturate a 10Mbit line.

Re:shed some light?

[MrFreshly]

It says Pentium-based computer...but I think they're talking about newer Penitum-4 based computers. A 3GHz box with the right I/O cards and 800MHz FSB can crank out a lot of traffic. It's also much cheaper than an Itanium and many other more current chips.

It'd be a whole lot cooler if they were doin' it with C64's.

Re:shed some light?

[Enoch Zembecowicz]

I work for a cable company that shall not be named. A while ago a coworker and I were scavaging for some computers for a project when we came across a bunch of rackmount boxes. They were P3 550's (1 cpu), and in addition to the regular PC stuff they had these strange cards in them with about four or five BNC connectors on the back. I was told by one of the video people (I work in the internet division) that these boxes were part of an interactive television experiment that was later scrapped. The card mentioned would shuffle different video signals around, inject other stuff into the signal, etc. If it could handle several channels of video I'm certain similar hardware would do quite well with cell phones.

Re:shed some light?

[Gordonjcp]

Don't know about wireless kit (probably many thousands) but E1 cards are a few hundred quid and usually provide 30 voice channels per E1, of which there may be two or four on the board.

It would be nice to get your own celltower, but your range would be pretty limited. You'd need one for every few square miles. I wonder if there'd be anything to stop you setting up your own cell tower in a dead spot, and letting people roam to it? We hardly ever use roaming any more in the UK, since nearly everywhere is covered by all four providers, or not at all.

Re:shed some light?

[LostCluster]

Nope, John Q. Public can't use this to create his own cell phone company, no way he'd be able to afford the license to use the GSM frequencies...

And the key "battery not included" in this problem is also that this thing is going to need some link longer-range than itself to get back to the main PTSN, otherwise you can only call other users on the same micronode and that's likely pointless because they'll all be able to hear you shout too.

So really, the main use of such a device will be to fill in small black holes in the existing networks. This is a big step forward in making the devices such as the ones they'd have to put to get cell phones to work in the subways cheaper for the providers.

Re:shed some light?

[Mattcelt]

Incremental repeaters are already available. They must be low enough power to fall beneath the regulated power levels of the FCC, generally not more than 4-5 watts, I think.

aceteq.com has some good repeaters, even the 1900 mhz repeaters for US GSM for less than $800. Other systems can be $3000 or more, and can cover larger areas (I've seen some that were capable of 25,000 sq ft.)

So you would have to do a running line of small repeaters to get service to an area, similar to the 802.11 repeaters we've seen here. You might be able to convert it to line-of-sight and do it that way, too.

But the short of it is, it can be done, albeit somewhat expensively.

Re:shed some light?

[Entrope]

Bandwidth and routing functions are not problems -- the radio function is the problem. Traditionally, decoding the modulated signal (finding the carrier and recovering likely bits) was done in dedicated hardware. Sometimes, Viterbi or other maximum-likelihood decoding is also done in hardware. WIth current PCs -- especially with SIMD instructions like the SSE family -- the demodulation function can be implemented mostly in software.

The practical effect is that instead of having a (hardware) platform that works only with certain encoding and modulation standards, you have a (software) platform that works with many. It is easier to produce software than hardware at the scales needed, and it allows for an easier upgrade path.

Re:shed some light?

[WhytTiger]

I've worked with some cellular equipment, and found out something lately. One of the major brands of cell equipment (Rhode & Schwarz) uses an older K6 to run their equipment (which is esentially the 'brain' of a cell site) and it runs it's operating system off of a standard laptop hard drive. However, this equipment has specialized boards that I assume take most of the work out of call processing. I am curious how they will accomplish that with a PC. I assume that this isn't a typical PC, it at least has to have some specialized PCI cards in it.

Re:shed some light?

[tfulton2]

Does this mean my cell phone could get /.ed now?

Re:shed some light?

[GlassHeart]

Can a guy off the street spend a few hundred and build his own phone network, or is the marginal cost still significant?

The hardware itself is not particularly expensive. Commercial cellular equipment are costly because they tend to be custom hardware with limited production runs. They are also subject to very high reliability requirements (a few hours of downtime per year), and have hardware-level redundancy. If you relax those requirements, an PC with appropriate I/O hardware (even better, additional DSPs) can certainly do the job.

Your bigger problem is software. Since you won't have access to the handset (Nokia is unlikely to help you), all debugging will be network-side only (and therefore that much harder). Simulators in this market easily cost tens of thousands of dollars per unit. Some aspects of the specs (encryption, in particular) are not easily accessible. Getting a real telephone switch to test against is essentially fantasy for your "guy off the street". There's also a pretty big database effort in the backend, if you want your "subscribers" to be able to roam into another network. The software mentioned in the article appears to solve a large number of these problems, but it's not clear how interoperable they are.

if it's cheap enough, I'll start my own wireless phone company :)

Unfortunately, this will likely remain capital intensive. You'll need a front office to deal with customer service, a back office to deal with subscriptions, and a technical crew to maintain the cell sites, not to mention getting rights to the build cell sites, acquire spectrum, etc.

I think it's more likely that this will be used by established telecommunications companies to lower their costs in areas where downtimes are less of a problem.

Re:shed some light?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, that was a very poorly written article.

Re:shed some light?

[aminorex]

Imagine your own picocell, inside your house.
Now your cell is your wireless, and you can use
it with your IP telephony service. Likewise when
visitors come to your house, their calls can be
routed over IP.

Imagine everyone has picocells. Now you don't use
cell minutes, you don't pay line charges, you just
communicate at will, whenever you're in range.

Re:shed some light?

[Gordonjcp]

I think it's more likely that this will be used by established telecommunications companies to lower their costs in areas where downtimes are less of a problem.

It's like using RAID - who needs to make backups any more? 300G of raid storage comes in at under 1/G, and what are you going to back it up to?

Now in the same way, you can use many very inexpensive cell sites to provide coverage, and not worry if one goes down. That way, in remote areas (I'm from North-West Scotland, we have cell towers that can only be reached by helicopter) it won't matter quite so much about getting someone out to fix failures.

In answer to the (great) grandparent post, in theory, yes - Joe Public *could* go and build their very own cellular network.

Re:shed some light?

[LostCluster]

Nice Utopia vision, but the "big guys" still are the only ones with licenses to the GSM frequencies.

Re:shed some light?

[aminorex]

You can broadcast on any frequency you like,
within certain power limits, which depend on
the frequency.

In fact, you do. Light and radio waves are
reflecting, refracting, and even radiating
from your body even as you
read this.

What a mindjob, eh?

I'm buzzing all over

[Dancin_Santa]

Loads of great ideas that are going to change the world and it's not going to cost barely anything!

It's like 1998 all over again!

The original article

[jonbrewer]

Have a look at the original release from the US National Science Foundation. With some nice pictures. :-)

Re:The original article

[Anonymous Coward]

Bloody hell! Are you guys in the US still running analog mobile services?

Seriously, we've been installing digital nodes in the UK for years now with the kind of 'new' setup that you can see in the parent's picture. The old brown stuff looks like the kit I was ripping out back in 1997 - clunky old analog cell switches. So as well as reducing the kit costs, the services are also being switched over to digital as well? In that case, the size/kit reduction is a given, and this is nothing special.

If we're talking small cell nodes, can we take a look at some in Europe? Some of the Scandanavian ones are truly tiny (read 2x1x1 foot box) and can be mounted pretty much anywhere. While I appreciate that the US may be huge and need these kind of things for rural communities, this is by no means technically cutting edge and much more of a cost reduction exercise by using newer technology.

Re:The original article

[Anonymous Coward]

The analog towers are being phased out by digital over time. Digital is much cheaper to run but, like you said, the US is huge and companies can't go running around replacing every tower they use at once (Not companies with a large coverage footprint anyway).

Re:The original article

[More Karma Than God]

There's also the fact that here in the US any deactivated cell phone must be usable to call 911. (our emergency number)

This probably means that analog is being kept around partly by legislation rather than by folks using analog phones.

Re:The original article

[chooks]

Did anyone else notice that the equipment room has wood paneling? I didn't know they built cell towers in the 70's....

Re:The original article

[ibpooks]

Only the most rural areas have exclusively analog service; everywhere else is covered by at least one digital provider. Most of the interstate highways (and adjacent cities) are covered by a couple digital providers.

Re:The original article

[stripes]

Bloody hell! Are you guys in the US still running analog mobile services?

Yes, in the sort of areas that have similar population densities to Scotland's non-served cell areas (and to be fair, some parts of Scotland that get lots of tourists but still have low population density do have digital cell coverage while in the USA areas there are few areas like that...there are also places in Scotland that have digital coverage while the equivalent part of the USA has analog only, but on the whole I would say there isn't too much of that)

The old brown stuff looks like the kit I was ripping out back in 1997 - clunky old analog cell switches

I would hazard a guess that the analog kit here is older then 1997, most cell phone build-outs post 1990 here were digital, or at the very least DAMPS, but there were a lot of cell phone build-outs prior to 1990. Cell phones have been with us for a very long time (I seem to recall some people putting the start of the US cell stuff at 1952 or so, but I think those were really radio phones), and only the high use areas or areas with new competitors since about 1990 have seen new build-outs. The other areas "suffer" with whatever they were first installed with until it becomes cheaper to upgrade it then to fix it.

Re:The original article

[SEE]

While I appreciate that the US may be huge and need these kind of things for rural communities

Oregon alone (96,000 sq. mi.) is bigger than the United Kingdom (94,525 sq. mi.), but has 1/15th the population.

What about the big companies?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm a little skeptical about this. How companies like Nokia, Lucent, Ericsson, that make billions on equipment would "accept" this?

Re:What about the big companies?

[Phreakiture]

They don't have to "accept" it. It will be there if they accept it or not. They just need to understand that if they don't adapt to it, regardless of whether or not they "accept" it, it will flatten them.

This is just the tip of the iceberg. Improvements in the software could add support for USTDMA, iDEN, CDMA, and maybe even AMPS/TACS (analogue) phones, making the specific phone architecture irrelevant, and ending the existing format war.

An additional benefit is this: If service is made available to emergency services (which was implied), then the emergency services can get access to better networking than they do now. Of course, the inherent risk in outsourcing the network must be weighed.

room full of communications hardware

[faldore]

But is the PC as reliable as a room full of communications hardware? I think not. As soon as your Hard Drive goes out 911 is out of commission.

Re:room full of communications hardware

[Anonymous Coward]

At the same time, a single PC & the TRX's could be run from a single diesel generator. Current base station hardware draws a lot more power.

Why couldn't you have a redundent failover? It would still be far cheaper than the current hardware operators have to install.

Re:room full of communications hardware

[vidarh]

Why do you assume the PC wouldn't be a hardened rack unit targetted for industrial use? And why do you assume it won't have a solid state storage device instead of a hard disk? And why do you assume it won't be highly redundant? And why, even though the system COULD run on one PC do you assume there won't be an extra machine there for failover? And why do you assume the towers will be so far apart that service will be entirely lost and not just degraded if a PC fails?

Assuming using a PC can't give redundancy and resilience against failures is extremely presumptious. But for areas that currently don't have ANY coverage, even a desktop PC powered base station would be an improvement.

Re:room full of communications hardware

[Da Web Guru]

And why do you assume the towers will be so far apart that service will be entirely lost and not just degraded if a PC fails?

Because according to the article (as well as the writeup for this topic), they are targeted for rural communities, wehere by definition the towers will be so far apart that service will be entirely lost for that area because there will not be another tower close enough to pick up the slack....

Re:room full of communications hardware

[DaEMoN128]

OK, lets consider that this computer has a hard drive failure. Lets also assume that this computer is a Gateway 7450R rackmount server. Now consider that this is a relatively cheap server with scsi 160 in raid 5. No problem that your hd just crapped out. Run that with two ov these servers and cluster them, you have total redundancy. You could even shoot the other node in the head and it would still keep on trucking. 8 grand and a bookshelf in your closet is more than enough to replace a room full of equipment, Im sold.

Re:room full of communications hardware

[Read Icculus]

Well a simple i386 Linux PC that operates with a HD doesn't exactly meet the five 9's of reliability that you need to operate telcom services, but that is what Carrier Grade Linux is for. OSDL is working on, and has released specifications for CGL, a spec that quote "provides standards based, open architecture software platform for converging telecommunications/data communications systems, which require virtually zero downtime." Linux is currently making some major inroads into the telcom sector, replacing all sorts of COTS systems that are currently in use. Linux will be running on that room full of communications software before too long. So I guess those folks with the telcom PC are just getting a head start by running the system on Linux.

Re:room full of communications hardware

[Anonymous Coward]

I do wonder, though. If you want five 9s, why wouldn't you use QNX? Is it really so much more expensive than open-source?

Re:room full of communications hardware

[trynis]

But is the PC as reliable as a room full of communications hardware?

This may just show my limited experience with base stations, but why do they need a big airconditioned room in the first place? The new 3G base stations can be masqueraded as a flag pole. I see no reason why GSM base stations should be any bigger. What am I missing?

Re:room full of communications hardware

[Viol8]

If you go to the expense of having a PC thats SERIOUSLY hardened against failure (as opposed to maybe just throwing in a UPS and some disk striping)
then it'll probably cost you as much as the hardware its attempting to replace. Obviously they following the better-than-nothing approach here with a cheap price but not 5 9s reliability.

Re:room full of communications hardware

[David Kennedy]

The article talks about a standard PC, which might mean a hardened box, but I doubt it. A unit such as you describe is no longer cheap, and makes dedicated hardware cost competitive again.

As for reduncancy, when I worked in the telecommunications industry - not wireless, but optical long-haul - even having redundant machines in the same physical location was regarded as unsafe.

What if there is big power failure? A serious fire? A flood? A plane crash on top of the station? A meteor strike? There's resiliency and then there's five nines resiliency, which takes a lot more work

Re:room full of communications hardware

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do you assume [this'n'that]

Maybe he read the article? Or even the original news release quoted therein and found out what is really being done?

Naah, reading the article would be cheating...

Re:room full of communications hardware

[Anonymous Coward]

The article talks about researchers, so you're probably right that it's not a hardened box. Not yet. But when (if) it's put into the phone system, it will be hardened. And that probably means UPS, solid state disk, CPU's that run at a frequency where fans are not necessary, etc.

Re:room full of communications hardware

[RoLi]

Doesn't matter, another cell will take over.

Re:room full of communications hardware

[xanadu-xtroot.com]

What if there is big power failure? A serious fire? A flood?

"I didn't have enough money for cab fare! Locusts! It wasn't my fault I swear to God!"

Re:room full of communications hardware

[Mr.Sharpy]

I don't think it really matters much that PC hardware may, on average, offer slightly lower reliability than dedicated communications hardware. Whatever impact it might have on system reliability is neglibile in comparison to the problems the wireless networks have with reliability "just because." Would you really consider cellular service "reliable?" If so, I will just say that it is not the case everywhere. My cingular service is truly tragic.

If PC based systems can offer average reliability for a site at greatly lower cost than dedicated hardware, I say they should go for it. Maybe lower market entry costs will help foster competition.

Re:room full of communications hardware

[Read Icculus]

Currently if you want 5 or 6 9s of reliability in the telcom sector you usually are using some sort of specialized OS that doesn't really have the sort of capabilities that you find in Linux or QNX. Of course QNX is used for various mission critical systems, but it's usually cheaper to use a less capable not widely known OS,(not usually open source). However Carrier Grade Linux is changing the status quo, as it becomes 5 9s reliable it will be vastly cheaper to implement the same OS over a massive variety of different hardware. MIPS, ia-32, PPC and all the other various telcom procs will be running the same standards based OS. There's some nice articles on the subject on the net and in issue 30 of Linux User & Developer.

Re:room full of communications hardware

[Read Icculus]

Should've included this in my other post - As to why you would want to use Linux over QNX in telcom equipment. Linux, especially embedded Linux can be put on all manner of devices, with a very small footprint, (about twice to three times as large as the OS footprint of current telcom OSs, but offering a full fledged, standards based OS, along with quite a few networking apps, (TCP/IP, NFS, RAMdisk, telnetd, and a shell according to a chart in front of me on the subject), along with excellent throughput and latency), it's free, it's currently undergoing massive development, and anyone can mess with the source and modify it to fit their specific needs. QNX certainly offers reliability, but when CGL becomes a reality there should really be no question that it's the best OS for the job. Hopefully as various companies and groups implement CGL we will get some nice improvements and patches.

Re:room full of communications hardware

[evilviper]

But is the PC as reliable as a room full of communications hardware?

They aren't going to call up Dell and say they need a system. They're going to get a system from a manufacturer that deals in enterprise-level, high-reliability, fault-tolerant computer systems.

From the article, it seems this is mainly intended for areas where it isn't isn't economically feasable to put up an expensive, conventional cell-phone tower.

Handsets

[upside]

Next, affordable handsets.

Re:Handsets

[Fred IV]

Next, affordable handsets
And affordable customer service...and affordable billing systems...

This is good news, but there are many other expenses involved that new cell companies have to contend with.

This could be a serious cost saving

[Anonymous Coward]

Not only will this allow cellular rollouts in poorer countries, expect to start seeing this in small pico cell sites across the world. I work for a company that produces network management software, and I know how complex a rollout process for single cell site is. The lists of equipment are huge and costly, and we have an entire set of modules that allow companies to keep track of the hardware in each site and its configuration. In short, cells sites are complex, costly to build and hard to maintain.

Replacing all of that with a tower, antenna and a PC would be a huge saving, both in terms of planing, installation and maintainence. A single site could be rolled out in a matter of weeks, rather than months, and cost a fraction of what it costs now.

For us in Europe, maybe it could help reduce costs and get the debt-laden operators back on their feet. For those of you in the US, you could well see much better coverage on all networks.

Re:This could be a serious cost saving

[Molander]

The cost of the radio equipment on a site is about half the cost of a site.

So while reducing the cost to half would indeed save a lot of money it will still be quite expensive to build.

Don't forget the running cost such as electricity, rent, transmission, etc.
These will not change by much using a software radio.

All OSes are equal but some are more equal...

[heironymouscoward]

Linux just keeps demonstrating how it's more equal than anything else. Whatever your systemL complex, large, small, embedded, superclustered, it's starting to be obvious that Linux is the best way of making it come alive.

2003 will be remembered as the year that the word "Linux" became synonymous with cheap, reliable, omnipresent operations.

Re:All OSes are equal but some are more equal...

[Jherico]

Linux just keeps demonstrating how it's more equal than anything else.

This story shows nothing of the sort. Its not about how linux is the 'end all, be all' operating system for every kind of hardware. Its more about how a cheap, general purpose piece of hardware (the ubiquity of which having virtually nothing to do with linux) can serve the function of a larger set of very expensive, specialized hardware.

If the group had instead ported linux to that 'closet full of communications equipment'm your point might be valid, but sadly a) a lot of that equipment is may already running linux and b) that doesn't make the equipment any cheaper.

I believe in Linux as much as anyone, but I don't doubt they could have done the same thing with a windows box, or an OS X box. Linux is the great equalizer in the software arena, but cell phone towers are as much of a hardware problem as software, and PC's (regardless of OS) are the great equalizer in that arena.

Re:All OSes are equal but some are more equal...

[RoLi]

This story shows nothing of the sort.

If you take a step back and look at the big picture, it shows exactly that.

If you build something really new (or replace something from the ground up as in this example) Linux is the way to go. There are no "switching costs" holding it back, there are no desktop apps or games needed. Open Source is the only sane choice.

I believe in Linux as much as anyone, but I don't doubt they could have done the same thing with a windows box, or an OS X box.

Wrong. The goal was to build a cheap solution that is not dependent on a single provider (because that provider will screw you). That is impossible with Windows or MacOSX, get it through your skull already.

This project has built a solution in which all parts are interchangeable and available through many sources. You can build a Debian/Intel system and switch to SuSE/AMD next time or vice versa.

Re:All OSes are equal but some are more equal...

[Jherico]

Wrong. The goal was to build a cheap solution that is not dependent on a single provider (because that provider will screw you).

I got the impression that the goal was to find a way to replace specialized equipment that costs hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars, with equipment that was much cheaper.

The whole 'the provider will screw you' argument is dubious. Windows and Mac OS X boxen are commodities, so its not as if Apple or MS will be able to apply pressure to some community using store bought machines to give them more money.

My point isn't that linux should not have been used. It was most likely the best choice and had I been a part of the project I would have supported Linux over any other OS. It can be argued that it wasn't the only possible choice for reducing the cost of such systems by an order of magnitude.

This project has built a solution in which all parts are interchangeable and available through many sources. You can build a Debian/Intel system and switch to SuSE/AMD next time or vice versa.

In practice its never that simple. First off, the only company making this software right now is Vanu, so its probably going to sell the system as a turnkey solution, so while Vanu isn't stuck with any one provider, the customers may be. Second, this is specifically targeted at rural or underdeveloped areas, places where technical expertise in Linux (or indeed any OS) isn't likely to be as common as in areas that already have cell phone coverage.

If it will make you feel better, you know, "Hooray for linux!", but don't kid yourself into thinking that linux is the perfect solution for every problem, or that joe farming community in Bumfuck, WI needs to use linux because it will defeat communism and create utopia. overenthusiastic linux zealotry has probably done as much to hurt linux as MS could ever hope to do.

Re:All OSes are equal but some are more equal...

[RoLi]

The whole 'the provider will screw you' argument is dubious. Windows and Mac OS X boxen are commodities, so its not as if Apple or MS will be able to apply pressure to some community using store bought machines to give them more money.

What if your not-connected-to-the-Internet machine doesn't work because of WPA? What if it turns out that some servicepack "alters the deal" and you now need thousands of CALs?

I'm sorry that I don't have a link, but something similar happened to an airline: They wanted to implement some ticket-tracking system, wanted to use Windows but couldn't because they would have needed an insane number of CALs. What if (you will hate me for saying that impossibility) the new Windows-version doesn't work with your product or a new flaw introduces performance problems or crashes?

Windows adds a single point of failure into your system, that's a fact. That point of failure can be of technical nature (bugs that MS doesn't care enough about to fix) or fiscal nature (License costs change) or even a lifecycle nature (product or needed part of product gets discontinued)

Please, dear Jherico, tell me what great advantages can outweight all these risks?

It can be argued that it wasn't the only possible choice for reducing the cost of such systems by an order of magnitude.

Sure, if you go from fully proprietary to commodity hardware and proprietary OS, it reduces costs. Going to a fully commodity system will reduce the costs even more.

First off, the only company making this software right now is Vanu, so its probably going to sell the system as a turnkey solution, so while Vanu isn't stuck with any one provider, the customers may be.

Since Vanu made the decision what OS to use, the only thing that matters is what is good for Vanu. Your point is moot.

Second, this is specifically targeted at rural or underdeveloped areas, places where technical expertise in Linux (or indeed any OS) isn't likely to be as common as in areas that already have cell phone coverage.

First you say that Vanu will sell a turnkey system, then you make ridiculous claims that Linux expertise is needed?

First, these stations are fully automated, so it doesn't matter where they are, the maintainers will come from the central, not from a farm nearby. Second, no end-user will need any Linux expertise, it will be matter of entering a command or selecting an icon, if even that.

If it will make you feel better, you know, "Hooray for linux!", but don't kid yourself into thinking that linux is the perfect solution for every problem,

OSS (not necessarily Linux) is indeed the best solution in all cases in which 1) you need an OS and 2) need only an OS and no special apps/drivers/niche-features/etc (because you create all your apps yourself).

Yes, I said in all those cases.

Linux combines the advantages of proprietary OSes (it's there, you don't have to reinvent the wheel) and of in-house OSes (you control everything about it)

That's why 5 years ago about 2/3 of embedded systems with OSes used in-house OSes, while now the majority of embedded projects already use Linux.

or that joe farming community in Bumfuck, WI needs to use linux because it will defeat communism and create utopia. overenthusiastic linux zealotry has probably done as much to hurt linux as MS could ever hope to do.

How exactly is your blathering connected to cellphone stations?

This has nothing to do with Linux zealotry. Ask anyone in the embedding-industry. Linux is the best solution in cases where you need just an OS and develop all/most apps for it yourself. (Just like in this case)

Re:All OSes are equal but some are more equal...

[Anonymous Coward]

Linux lacks reliability ... PC's lack reliability

Perhaps Red Hat Linux lacks reliability, and Gateway value-priced desktop PCs lack reliability. Do you claim this is true of more specialized Linux distributions and mid-to-high-end rackmount PCs as well?

Re:All OSes are equal but some are more equal...

[stripes]

I got the impression that the goal was to find a way to replace specialized equipment that costs hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars, with equipment that was much cheaper.

I think you are right...however that gives a free OS like Linux a few advantages. One there is no purchase cost for the OS, so your per unit costs go down (by $200 if you have to buy WinXP retail, or maybe by as little as $5 if you buy a huge number of WinCE licencess). Two you can run on a wider array of hardware then most other OSes, so you might be able to save money on the hardware. For "any comercial OS" as opposed to "that one comercial OS" this isn't really an advantage since a given set of hardware tends to have at least one non-free OS that runs on it. So if you want to run on a FROON2000 CPU and pay money for QNX you probbably can, if you want to run WinXP on it then the FROON2000 had better really be an x86 of some sort.

On the plus side sometimes comercial OSes have drivers for stuff free OSes don't, or are faster. QNX does context switches faster then Linux (or did last I checked), and might let you get away with slower (and cheaper!) hardware for the same job, and if that price reduction is more then QNX's cost then it is a win. Simillarally Windows can drive lots of softmodems and Linux can drive very few, if your productr needed a modem, and the cheapest one was a softmodem that Linux didn't drive that could be an issue (not likely because modems cost a lot less then Windows, so unless your project has to deal with hardware that is already deployed...).

The whole 'the provider will screw you' argument is dubious. Windows and Mac OS X boxen are commodities, so its not as if Apple or MS will be able to apply pressure to some community using store bought machines to give them more money.

Well if they had decided to use OSX then they would have to pay Apple's hardware prices, which are not all that cheap. They would also be stuck with a hardware platform that seems to change once a year or two. If they go with Windows they might be stuck with some product regrstration BS that gets in the way of the turnkey operation (WinCE probbably wouldn't have that problem though). Comercial OSes do get in the way sometimes.

My point isn't that linux should not have been used. It was most likely the best choice and had I been a part of the project I would have supported Linux over any other OS. It can be argued that it wasn't the only possible choice for reducing the cost of such systems by an order of magnitude.

You are right, use of Linux probbably "only" saved a few $100 per unit, and since it looks like they are already saving $10,000 that last $100 isn't a big deal.

Would I have chosen Linux? Well, not really. I'm more of a BSD fan, but the same arguments apply there, and Linux was probbably as good a choice as any of the BSDs (except maybe OpenBSD...or in a few years Dragonfly).

Re:All OSes are equal but some are more equal...

[stripes]

OSS (not necessarily Linux) is indeed the best solution in all cases in which 1) you need an OS and 2) need only an OS and no special apps/drivers/niche-features/etc (because you create all your apps yourself).

A few more places where CSS might beat OSS.

• the minimum hardware needed to run your app doesn't run an OSS OS, like if all you need is a 6502 at 4Mhz it makes little sense to buy a 386SX so you can run Linux (of corse int he low end case you frequently write the OS on your own, you need to make sure you will ship enough units to that the $10 cheaper hardware will cover the extra NRE of working in such constrained hardware and maybe writing the OS as well)
• The CSS might perform better (I guess you could call that a "niche-feature" though), for example QNX services interrupts faster then other x86 OSes, or at least it did last I checked.
• The CSS's vender might be attempting to break into a market and not only match OSS's $0 per unit price, but throw in some resources like marketing money and maybe programmers or something to help sweeten the deal.
• The CSS has more people that you can hire at lower wages to work on it (maybe more people have MS Access on their resume then MySQL, and they work for less...of corse in that case you may end up needing far more of them for far longer to make a less stable product, but hey it looks good on paper)
• Your company makes CSS OSes that can run on the hardware you are using. I mean would MS ship a wrist watch running Linux even if it was in all ways better then "WinCE for wrist tops"?

That's why 5 years ago about 2/3 of embedded systems with OSes used in-house OSes, while now the majority of embedded projects already use Linux.

Does that include CoinOp video games? (that was the last place I did embedded work...er, except for that other thing)

Re:All OSes are equal but some are more equal...

[RoLi]

the minimum hardware needed to run your app doesn't run an OSS OS, like if all you need is a 6502 at 4Mhz it makes little sense to buy a 386SX so you can run Linux (of corse int he low end case you frequently write the OS on your own, you need to make sure you will ship enough units to that the $10 cheaper hardware will cover the extra NRE of working in such constrained hardware and maybe writing the OS as well)

With that hardware you have no OS in a classical sense at all, you implement your apps right on the hardware. Of course nowadays nobody does that anymore anyway.

The CSS might perform better

It might. However 1) you can tweak Linux a lot and 2) some x0% improvement is usually not worth the extra cost in license fees or implementation time.

If the alternative isn't magnitudes faster (anything slower than twice as fast just isn't worth it), the added costs (licensing, future risks) outweight the saved hardware ressources, especially with today's chips.

The CSS's vender might be attempting to break into a market and not only match OSS's $0 per unit price, but throw in some resources like marketing money and maybe programmers or something to help sweeten the deal.

Never heard of anyone doing that, also such a deal is highly unusual and will raise eybrows as everybody will ask how and when the vendor will want to make money off you.

The CSS has more people that you can hire at lower wages to work on it (maybe more people have MS Access on their resume then MySQL, and they work for less...of corse in that case you may end up needing far more of them for far longer to make a less stable product, but hey it looks good on paper)

Plain wrong because of 2 reasons: 1) In the embedded market Linux is the standard and much more people have experience in Linux/embedded than WinCE and 2) Linux/embedded is much closer to Linux/desktop than WinCE resembles WindowsXP. A reasonable skilled Linux/desktop developer can do Linux/embedded stuff, a WinXP developer is nearly useless on WinCE.

Your company makes CSS OSes that can run on the hardware you are using. I mean would MS ship a wrist watch running Linux even if it was in all ways better then "WinCE for wrist tops"?

I agree here. Although I don't see Microsoft getting into that market...

In my previous posting I forgot to mention the biggest advantage of OSS and especially Linux in the embedded market:

You get hold on a huge library of applications which are easily ported/compiled for your target. I have myself compiled dozens of apps for ARM, some of which weren't designed for any non-x86 architectures, nevertheless it wasn't that hard.

With Linux, you get a full OS with utilities. With anything else you get merely a development platform.

Re:All OSes are equal but some are more equal...

[heironymouscoward]

Linux lacks reliability...

ROTFL. Truly, the irony in your comment is majestic. I couldn't agree more. Linux is a sham, it just crashes all the time! Why, the ranks of Debian servers in our company crash like, well, at least once every ten years! And we never know whether it's the hardware, the software, or some bizarre combo of the two!

But... in contrast, the Windows clusters we also run, which are necesarily about 20 times more powerful to run the same number of users... well, if we go one month without a serious problem that is entirely and utterly undiagnosable, we consider ourselves lucky.

Hahahaha. Keep 'em rolling!

GNU Radio

[metatruk]

Sounds sorta similar to GNU Radio.
It's cool that as computers get faster, you can have software replace hardware :-)

Re:GNU Radio

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm very familiar with Vanu, Inc. It is very very similar. Most of the code in GNU Radio comes from the SpectrumWare Project at the MIT Laboratory of Computer Science, which is the group that Vanu (the CEO of Vanu, Inc) and most of the founders of Vanu, Inc. came from. The idea is the same, but the implementation is likely more refined, and evolved.

Re:GNU Radio

[Anonymous Coward]

and this one ..... "The SDR-1000 is a complete Software Defined Radio transceiver interface to a PC sound card. It provides everything needed to convert a Personal Computer into a high performance, DC-65MHz general coverage receiver with 160M-6M Amateur Radio (Ham) band transmit capability." Granted it's not the same frequency range nand diesn't support multiple simulanteous frequencies, but it's only $499.00.

BTW: "...Support is also provided in GNU/Radio under Linux ..."

Re:GNU Radio

[bill_mcgonigle]

It's cool that as computers get faster, you can have software replace hardware

Tell that to the linux laptop folks who have WinModems. :)

Re:GNU Radio

[evilviper]

You've still got a major piece of hardware grabbing the signal and getting it into your computer.

About the only advantage software defined radio has, is that it's one common piece of general-purpose hardware to do everything. You could do the same thing by having inexpensive modules hook-up to a similar hardware device. Having software doing the job only ensures that it will never be effecient or feasable.

Just think... How much would you have to pay for a very fast computer that would be able to do MPEG-2 encoding in real-time from a $40 TV-tuner card? Then again, you could just spend $100 more on a MPEG-2 TV-tuner, and stick it in a dirt-cheap system.

There are just incredible advantages to a custom-designed piece of hardware. Faster processing, lower price, lower electrical usage, less heat output, etc.

GNU Radio is a bit of paranoia. It will not have any practical use, unless the government goes completely totalitarian, and will not give you access to any siganl-recieving hardware without DRM.

Small, rural communities?

[daveinthesky]

How about turning this into a money saver for the average big-city american as well?

Secure?

[benpeter]

Hardware is generally far more difficult to compromise than software, esp' a known operating system (regardless of how much more secure it may be than other cough, doze, boxes) You'd want some very secure remote access if at all. Otherwise you could find yourself with a whole bunch of phones ringing a la lawn-mower man style in a country town near you.

Re:Secure?

[TheLink]

Nowadays the only difference between hardware and software is:

It's software if you configure/program it. It's hardware if someone else does it.

Is a dial up modem hardware or software? Is an Intel P4 processor hardware or software?

The fewer things you can do to something, the harder it is to compromise it. But just because you don't know nearly the full range of things possible on a piece of "hardware" doesn't mean others don't, esp those who know it as "software".

Oh COME ON!

[fleppir]

Nobody is talking about hooking this thing up to the Internet directly. It's just a classic case of new tech replacing old.

Re:Oh COME ON!

[zangdesign]

The telecommunications industry is just as prone to hire dumbasses as any other industry. That being said, I'm willing to bet that the moment this was announced, some evil little twit started twiddling his thumbs and planning to crack it.

Perhaps a new law akin to Murphy's: if one man invents it, another man will make plans to pervert it.

Re:Oh COME ON!

[GlassHeart]

Nobody is talking about hooking this thing up to the Internet directly.

If the source code becomes publicly available, then it's not conceivable for somebody to hack a special version (that, for example, eavesdrops on certain calls, or bills certain calls to a different account), break in to a remote cellsite, and replace the running software unnoticed. Doing this today would not be impossible, but it's more difficult.

Remember, Risk = Likelihood * Damage. This new technology increased the Likelihood, and therefore the resulting Risk must be adequately addressed.

Re:Oh COME ON!

[Valar]

Who said anything about the source code? Just because it runs linux doesn't mean it has to be open source. In fact, I would guess that because this is coming from the telecos, it will be anything but open.

Re:Oh COME ON!

[GlassHeart]

Who said anything about the source code? Just because it runs linux doesn't mean it has to be open source.

Yes, but because it runs Linux, it's easier to hack an exploit (say, intercept certain messages heading for a billing server) in, because the hardware and development software are readily available. By "easier", I'm comparing it to a commercial RTOS running on a custom board. If the application level sources are opened, then the vulnerability grows a bit more. Finally, as these low-cost base stations are intended for use in remote areas, the risk of a physical break-in is increased.

Gormon and De Leon Need It

[aster_ken]

I'm originally from Stephenville, Texas - just down the road from these two communities. There are no third-generation networks available out there. My Sprint PCS phone doesn't work there, either - not even in analog mode. But just 20 miles away I have full signal strength in Vision mode.

I still have some friends in the region using Mid-Tex, and they haven't mentioned anything odd about their service. I guess that means it's a success as far as consumers are concerned.

Re:Gormon and De Leon Need It

[Anonymous Coward]

My Sprint PCS phone doesn't work there, either
Pfft. Get a real service provider. Sprint sucks.

ancient stuff?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm a student of telecommunications at an university of technology in Finland, and we've had compact basestations gathering dust at a student lab facility for _years_. (one Nokia and one Siemens, if I remember right)

The unit was about two mid-tower cases of volume, had an integrated PC, integrated antennaes, the whole bunch. Everything you need for a GSM basestation. And it really is an old model. Modern models are at least more efficient (with directional tracking antennaes, etc) and more inconspicious (they can look like fake chimneys, parts of wall, etc, so that it doesn't disturb the landscape.)

Probably we're not even talking about the same things since calling a basestation unit a "tower" is ridiculous. Maybe they've replaced the switching centre with a PC? Though I doubt it, since a PC/Pentium would be severely bandlimited to handle thousands of connections. Perhaps with dedicated hardware which is merely controlled by a PC..

Re:ancient stuff?

[Anonymous Coward]

It looks like they've integrated the line card, switch, backend control functions and possible also the TRX's into one PC, and replaced the general functionality of some of the TRX's with software.

Re:ancient stuff?

[mgs1000]

Are you talking about the Nokia InSite BTS?

I don't see what it so revolutionary about what Venu is doing, there have been small, cheap BTSs around for many years.

Re:ancient stuff?

[gl4ss]

tsk tsk, you shouldn't take away excuses of american cell providers for not providing adequate service. besides, would you except people from texas to settle on something that small?-)

united states has roughly double the population density of finland(~30 vs ~16 per square km) for example, and practically all of lapland has cell coverage, while the population density in lapland is 2.2 and most of of the areas are under 10 per square km. so the 'rural' excuse is worthless. the telecom companies however seem to have missed the point of building a good service(build a good cellular service and the users will start using it).

btw what's with these 50* errors on slashdot now?

Re:ancient stuff?

[RevMike]

the telecom companies however seem to have missed the point of building a good service(build a good cellular service and the users will start using it).

There is another part of the equation, however. I don't specifically know about Finland, but in many parts of Europe the wired telephone carriers were absolutely horrible. For instance, a few years ago I know some people who were interconnecting some offices in Athens. They needed to build a radio link because there was a 9 month lead time to get a circuit. In the US, that was a two week lead time, max. I've heard of 18 month waiting lists in Italy and France to get residential service. On top of that, calls were expensive in Europe. International travelers from the US would arrange that that the call originate from the US because the international rates were 60% to 80% cheaper.

When the cell phone companies arrived, they could deliver better service, faster and cheaper. They were adopted very quickly. When the cell phone companies started in the US, they could not deliver as well as the wired systems. they were less reliable and more expensive. Their only advantage was mobility.

If the American phone companies were putting out as poor a product as the European phone companies, I think adoption of cell technology would have gone much faster, and consequently the networks would have been built out more.

Re:ancient stuff?

[dedalus2000]

Is it posable that finland's population is more evenly distributed or that the density of rural finland alone is greater than say parts of oregon or west texas?

Re:ancient stuff?

[gl4ss]

the service is quite excellent on landlines, but they're not cheap(they're not free for local calls).

Re:ancient stuff?

[gl4ss]

not really, as the ac said you can end up travelling 100km for post office(or the state monopoly for alcohol) if you live in the wrong place in lapland.

most people live in southern finland, northern & easter finland are quite rural.

and from the look of the postings(by americans complaining cell coverage) it looks that the people who are complaining do live in population centres of some sort anyways(not so central suburbs and others with plenty of customers around), if there's population worth mentioning(there's a grocery store in 30km radius) it shouldn't be overly expensive to provide them with gsm access(the telecom could still make money off them).

Re:ancient stuff?

[GooberToo]

I remember reading year(s) ago about a card which was supposed to go into a low cost PC which could switch up to 4000 calls. Don't hold me to that number, but it was some very large number. Perhaps this is it finally being deployed.

Great!

[Anonymous Coward]

Now can I set up a cheap private single-cell cellphone 'network'? I want to be able to talk to my in-town buddies (or set up a cell-based computer network) without paying the telco a dime...

On a more serious note, I can see this being invaluable in disaster recovery and similar situations. In these cases the coordinator can have his roughnecks drive/tow/airdrop cheap van- or trailer-mounted rigs to local hilltops to erect hydraulic masts and quickly set up a limited access minimalist emergency network.

Cheers,
Coward 312-132

Support for Internet access is even better

[mobileone]

Voice calls are good, but wouldn't it be even better to also support Internet connectivity on the network.

Take a look at openggsn which is developing an open source GPRS core network. Maybe the Vanu people could use this to also allow Internet communications for their SW basestation.

Re:Support for Internet access is even better

[Viol8]

Yeah , that'll be just whats needed , a basestation taking emergency calls that suddenly gets swamped by TCP/IP traffic from some DoS attack or similar. No thanks.

Software Defined Radio

[Detritus]

This doesn't appear to be the same thing as a software defined radio, where almost all of the analog circuitry (LOs, mixers, IFs, demodulators) is replaced with a DSP and software. You need some very fast DSPs and ADCs to do that. You might be able to use a PC to process a demodulated GSM channel.

Re:Software Defined Radio

[metatruk]

True. However, I meant that it was similar in concept, not necessarily the same thing in function.

community mobile net

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder how long before this allows small community groups to create their own internal mobile networks...

This must be big

[tgrasl]

Where fo I buy shares ?

Hmmm

[Graymalkin]

I think I need to forward this to AT&T. They seem to be unable to build a tower within range of my house. It'd be really cool to get reception in my neighborhood without building a parabolic antenna to mount on my phone.

Hopefully this means good things for companies that own and operate cell towers in the US. One thing most cities here lack is decent coverage with the services you're paying for. I live in southern California which is pretty densely developed. Coverage in the inland areas can be pretty shoddy depending on what part of town you're kicking around in. San Bernadino and Riverside have decent coverage in the commercial sectors but crappy coverage in the outlying sprawl. I'm finding Orange county has the same problem. Several swaths of PCH have horrible coverage, both for AT&T and Cingular. LA has decent coverage downtown and in Hollywood.

This of course is concerning the networks' "Next Generation" (2.5G) network coverage. What I find really dastardly is no phones are really designed for the US market. Gadgets and whatnot be damned. We've got a much different situation than Europe or Asia. We've got lots of land to cover and lots less money going into tower upgrades. As such large tracts of land are being served by AMPS or PCS towers still. The phones sold anymore have no PCS support to fall back on save for the Siemens S46. I would have thought the major phone manufacturers would have seen fit to provide the bigger GSM providers phones that better fit the network infrastructure.

Re:Hmmm

[Viol8]

"They seem to be unable to build a tower within range of my house. "

Try a land line. You know , those old fashioned phones that plug into a wall and don't require
good RF reception? Jeez , what IS this obsession with cellphones people have , they're just telephones for chrissake! If your cell had a wire coming
out the back and had to be plugged into a wall socket would it be quite so "kool" then?

Re:Hmmm

[Eric Ass Raymond]

With a cellphone (and a working network) you can make a call anywhere, anytime. You're also available whenever you choose to be and you don't have to sit by the phone waiting for an important call.

Furthermore, SMS/texting is a truly wonderful for short, non-urgent messages like telling a friend where to meet you.

Owning a cellphone has nothing to do with coolness. That phase passed already in the 1990s. Now everybody from kids to senior citizens have a cellphone or two at home.

Re:Hmmm

[goranb]

But you have to admit that you do look cool using your cell phone with a parabolic antenna... ;)

Re:Hmmm

[dun0s]

As a Brit I find it hard to understand how the US has managed to end up with such a backward mobile phone infrastructure. Here in the UK I find it more difficult to find a place with no reception than to find a place with reception and the opposite appears to be true in the US. I would guess that most phones are aimed at the 2.5G GSM market because that is where most phones are being sold.

If I were in any UK highstreet this Saturday and pointed at a random person I can almost guarantee they would have a GSM mobile on them. I know of very very few people who don't have a mobile of some description. Secondly alot of those people will change their phone once a year if they need to or not. Ever since '98 when I became a mobile user I have changed my phone each year usually because it is subsidised upgrades by my contract provider.

While the UK is very densely populated and has relatively little land mass I found that even while driving across France earlier this year there was almost constant service including in the most rural locations. France is not what you would describe as having a dense population.

I believe that in the US the poor mobile infrastructure is the fault of both the poor regulation of the mobile market and the service providers who are unwilling to cover the entire US in a useable service.

Re:Hmmm

[jthj]

The reason the US has a bad infrastructure is because of the sparse population. We have states that are bigger than some countries. And a cell network is expensive. Most companies don't want to put towers up in the middle of nowhere when they will hardly be used. So hopefully this technology will make it more feasable to cover the areas that aren't going to get much use.

Re:Hmmm

[Graymalkin]

A landline would be fine if I could carry it around with me and had a decent long distance plan. MCI's Neighborhood deal costs as much as a good cell plan and isn't mobile. AT&T's Unlimited plan only works if both parties are AT&T customers which sucks. All the resale carriers want to add $30+ to an existing landline bill which after taxes ends up running about $20 itself. For the price of any of those you can have a decent cell phone plan with a subsidized - free or cheap - cell phone.

If you're away from home for more than ten minutes a day and want either to get in touch with people or have them get in touch with you a landline is sitting as home sucking up money. I've got the same number whether I'm in Los Angeles, San Fransisco, Denver, or Dallas. As I'm quite mobile a cell phone makes more sense for me than it does someone who sits at home all the time.

Besides simple connectivity most cells phones offer some useful features. Caller ID is a very nice thing to have because I know who's calling and whether I want to answer. I can turn the audible ringer off so I'm not bugging anyone else when I get a call. Most of the time I just forward all my calls to voicemail and check them at my leisure. I like my phone to be pull media.

These guys are gonna mad!!!!

[cewlnico]

http://www.ventasnet.de/modules.php?op=modload&nam e=News&file=article&sid=12&mode=thread&order=0&tho ld=0

oh-oh

[martin-boundary]

Unlike the other insightful posters, I'm just a regular slashdot drone^H^H^Hreader making a lame joke when I say:

Oh-oh! Cheaper than a roomful of equipment? Just wait until SCO hears they are using Linux. Then it'll be cheaper to have a roomful of equipment again.

GSM vs. CDMA: do we need those towers?

[ControlFreal]

At first, it seems that the solution portrayed in the article would make the deployment of GSM networks easier and cheaper. This would not only be a solution for developing countries, but also for rural areas in western countries. An illustration of this last point is readily made by comparing the GSM coverage of a densely populated country like The Netherlands (former state provider KPN) to that of a much more sparsely populated country like the US (AT&T wireless).

However, GSM is not the only cell-phone standard there is. Another standard which is often used in rural areas is CDMA. It seems this standard features larger cells, and fewer base stations (for, of course, a less densely populated cell). Indeed, Verizon has plans to convert parts of its network to CDMA: see here.

Does anybody have altual experience with deploying CDMA networks? (obviously, given the coverage map for GSM, I don't need that experience in Holland ;)

Re:GSM vs. CDMA: do we need those towers?

[Fred IV]

Indeed, Verizon has plans to convert parts of its network to CDMA

The article you linked to just refers to converting an new acquisition to CDMA. The rest of Verizon's network is already using CDMA as the network standard. The Japanese telcos like CDMA as well.

Re:GSM vs. CDMA: do we need those towers?

[LemonYellow]

GSM isn't the only standard, but it is _the_ de-facto standard outside of the USA. Consider it VHS to CDMA's Betamax if you like; It is more useful to seek to replace GSM base station hardware with software than to work with CDMA.

Re:GSM vs. CDMA: do we need those towers?

[RzUpAnmsCwrds]

Plans? Verizon has had a CDMA network for quite some time now. Sprint's network is, and always has been, 100% CDMA. Both offer 3G data services (1xRTT is 144kbps which technically qualifies it for 3G status).

Verizon has the best coverage in the US largely because of their use of CDMA. People who complain about coverage in the US usually have GSM providers (T-Mobile, Cingular, ATT). Verizon seems to be rock solid - not 100% coverage but decent none the less.

Re:GSM vs. CDMA: do we need those towers?

[RzUpAnmsCwrds]

"Does anybody have altual experience with deploying CDMA networks?"

Not surprisingly, the US has the most CDMA towers (and, ironically, the most GSM towers) of any nation in the world. This is largely because the countries of the EU are not counted as a single nation, but nonetheless, the US has plenty of CDMA towers in service. CDMA isn't particularly new (it's been around for years), it's just that it's getting more attention now that 3GSM is based on wideband CDMA technology (WCDMA).

We have many, many wireless systems in the US:
- AMPS; good old analog. High power, low call volume.
- TDMA; this is the old AT&T and Cingular networks
- GSM; AT&T's and Cingular's new network and T-Mobile
- Nextel; they use a different system
- CDMA; Sprint and Verizon

Re:GSM vs. CDMA: do we need those towers?

[Detritus]

Sprint used to be GSM. I had a GSM handset from Sprint. They gave me a free exchange for a CDMA handset when they dumped GSM.

Re:GSM vs. CDMA: do we need those towers?

[RzUpAnmsCwrds]

I was referring to "Sprint PCS", which most people think of when they think Sprint. Sprint Spectrum did offer GSM for a time, however, that network has been shut down for quite some time.

New slogan

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, I think you just came up with a great new slogan for Linux!

Linux: more equal than anything else.

For who?

[Martigan80]

The system offers the hope of making cellular technology more affordable for small, rural communities

Well I hope that's not the only reason. How about just having coverage all over America for starters? And cut out the damn roaming charges.

How different

[dnoyeb]

I wonder how much modification they did to the kernel. Perhaps the equipment in the tower only does switching and reading, but no translation? Linux not being a real time OS, I wouldn't expect it to handle communication that well. In fact just as poorly as any desktop computer handles data aquisition.

This is nice to hear. I'm resting a lot of my investment dollars in Linux!

Re:How different

[The One KEA]

There are real-time variants of the Linux kernel, and at best all they had to do was write a kernel module which would talk to the transmission devices. They may have even used the V4L API to do it. And the presence of a software GSM library here (http://kbs.cs.tu-berlin.de/~jutta/toast.html) would have made writing the software much easier as well.

Re:How different

[Jherico]

Linux not being a real time OS

Cell phone calls aren't real time either. If you stand next to someone and talk to them on a cell phone there's almost always a very perceptible delay. But by human perceptive standards, its not noticeable unless you have the contrast of no delay to look at.

Re:How different

[Anonymous Coward]

" I wonder how much modification they did to the kernel."

Did you ask them for it?

After all, it is GPL, isn't it?

Motorola are doing the exact same...

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not all that cheap though, don't fool yourself into thinking there's just a lan card in there.. I bet the SS7 networking components cost a fortune...

Pentium I

[Anonymous Coward]

You think for a cell site they could afford to buy something better than a Pentium I. Like maybe a Pentium II!

A/D is the bottleneck

[bulletman]

The main reason why software defined radio (SDR) hasn't yet taken off is insufficient A/D performance. And it's not the sampling rate that's the issue; A/D's exist now with sampling rates in the gigahertz range.

The bottleneck is in dynamic range -- there can be a large difference between the weakest and strongest signal in an channel (80 dB is one example). To sample with enough resolution to capture that dynamic range, you need a lot of bits. But the more bits you use, the slower you have to sample; it's a tradeoff.

Until A/D converters advance quite a bit more, SDR won't fulfill promise.

Re:A/D is the bottleneck

[Anonymous Coward]

This is exactly why SDR is making its first significant inroads at VHF/UHF/SHF, with line-of-sight and relatively short paths, and strictly allocated channels with limited power. Not very demanding as far as dynamic range is concerned.

mynuts won, for a little more monIE?

[Anonymous Coward]

so, you're saying that this handful of felons is willing to risk the lives/well being, of the planet/population/all of US, to 'protect' US from finding out about their whoreabull deeds?

yikes.

Smart family

[Halvard]

Vanu is the son of Amar Bose, founder of Bose, the maker of all of those great speakers. Another MIT wizkid.

Re:Smart family

[keesh]

Unfortunately, Bose speakers mostly suck, but they have a really good PR department. The phrase "reality distortion field" comes to mind.

If you're after decent speakers at a similar price, buy KEFs.

Re:Smart family

[Anonymous Coward]

"No highs? No lows? Must be Bose."

It's about time the guy moved into fields where Bose could easily excel: Delivering crappy audio quality at a low price. Oh wait, they do that already.

Re:Smart family

[tgd]

If you think Bose has ever made a consumer level quality speaker, you haven't heard good speaker!

But that doesn't change the fact that he's a smart guy. :)

"Software radio"

[tuomoks]

ref : "Vanu Software Radio is first of its kind to perform all functions of a GSM (a digital cellular standard) base station using only software and a non-specialized computer server." See :

http://www.google.com/search?q=software+radio

The savings come when replacing a lot of the analog radio parts with digital. Digital radio is much cheaper than analog to digital / digital to analog conversions with old ways, etc. One of our HAM friends can explain this much better.

Re:But...

[Anonymous Coward]

Will "sudo rm -rf" will delete my phone?
No, but it will remove the debug code from Mac OS X and makes it much faster to use.

You know what this means?

[TerryAtWork]

It means we can have our own phone networks! Is there ANYTHING we can't have? I know! A GIRLFRIEND!

It's been done before & it failed!!

[Anonymous Coward]

IAACT (I am a cellular tech) and I have seen at least two small scale systems - both of which failed. The first was made by an Australian company - Unilab (loony lab to its friends :)) The system used two off the shelf '386 cards and custom switching hardware to control a standalone analogue system. The problem wasn't with the processing it was in the RF paths - the transceivers were large and had to dissipate a lot of heat.

The second system was a small GSM system which did fit into a rack about the size of a tower case. Sounds a lot like this one doesn't it :)

The problem - channel capacity and maximum power output. Even the best transmitter is not super efficient and generates a fair bit of heat. The article doesn't mention the transmitters, the maximum output power or its capacity.

The article states that the system has been installed in a Texas town. I hope it's a real small Texas town! To provide decent in building coverage and coverage on the road in and out you need a high power transmitter. You have then got to dissipate the heat from the transmitter. Thats where the airconditoners come in for GSM. At least for the equipment I have seen.

Nortel CDMA equipment can operate quite happily in a hot room without airconditoning. The way they get around it is to use one kick ass heat sink and fans as loud as jet engine that any overclocker would drool over. And once again , in my experience it's the RF circuitry not the digital processing part that fails with the heat!

Anyway bring it on - I welcome the overtime repairing another BOB (bucket of bolts)

Re:It's been done before & it failed!!

[Anonymous Coward]

I think in this case they have discarded the RF circuitry in favor of doing it all in software. Fortunately, software doesn't get hot.

The traditional advantage...

[Short Circuit]

One of the traditional advantages of Linux is that you can modify the source code for free. (I.e. no licensing.)

That means device drivers and kernel-mode features are much more likely than with, say, Solaris or Windows.

Re:The traditional advantage...

[Jherico]

I don't disagree that this is an advantage of Linux, but its still not relevant to the article. Driver development for a windows box can still be done without the windows source, and though the tools for writing drivers on Windows aren't free, they're still a tiny fraction of the cost of developing drivers for custom or highly specialized hardware, as would be used in a cell phone tower. This is not a case of Linux vs Windows, this is a case of PC vs custom hardware.

More details in the whitepaper...

[darkov]

The poster should have included this link (pdf) - much more interesting.

This may work...mostly.

[SharpFang]

Here, in Poland it's very common that smaller ISPs use old 486 and pentiums as routers to provide net for a single block or several houses. This works well and is very cheap... except that the PCs were never meant for 24/7 use and simply they fail after some time. Those that can be easily repaired, are repaired, those FUBAR are dismantled for spare parts to repair the ones mildly broken and it works and still pays to replace them with other second-hand computers. You get what you pay for, the service has between 1 and 10% downtime - but it's CHEAP - means affordable for average polish citizen. Services based on proffessional equipment, broadband etc cost at least 3 times that.

So... if you're ready to forgive them that one day in a month on average your phone will go offline, you may hope for really cheap service...

Re:This may work...mostly.

[Oswald]

I wonder how much better things would get if they would find a way around using the hard drives. I have had a friend's old 486 running as my router (Linux Router Project) continuously for several years--the HDD isn't even connected to the motherboard. But the thing is, it was only 500mb in the first place--easily replaced these days with an SD card or something.

Re:This may work...mostly.

[SharpFang]

Note if you have enough RAM and APM, you can safely spin down the drive when unused. Although, what dies most often in the PCs mentioned are not harddrives but power supply, network cards and motherboards. (when you draw thin ethernet (BNC/TP) between houses, the network cards fry during most storms, some of them don't stop the charge and all the rest gets fried too.)

Money saving?

[jmcneill]

Pardon my ignorance, but I would have thought that the majority of the cost would have been the _giant fncking metal tower_, not the computer in the baby barn beside it. Does anybody have a ballpark of the cost of the equipment used to run one of these things?

How do they handle billing?

[AFirmGraspOfReality]

When you make a cell call, the various hardware at the BSM will generate call record data. Things like your phone number, ESN, who you called, duration, on and on. These are collected and then sliced-n-diced by mediation software and then that is sent to billing systems, which then send you a bill. In short, the software to do this magic is tightly bound to the output spec of the hardware. So, are these guys co-operating with the various telco software vendors? They will have to play ball if they want to have their cells connect with the "outside world". And as posted elsewhere...this sort of hardware (esp Nortel gear) is built like a tank. Very high quality and it has the snot tested out of it. I doubt your average Dell box will last any length of time. In the biz,we call it "carrier grade"...and it does not come cheap.

Re:How do they handle billing?

[Anonymous Coward]

Emulating and parsing certain types of CDR (call data record) output isn't rocket science. I've done it before.

Sounds like what my company does for satellites

[Anonymous Coward]

Obviously you can't replace the antennas and hardware that converts to a safe frequency, but anything that does logical operations is ripe for software implementation! With fast processors and fast networking, it's so much easier to do in software than hardware.

What to do with the old stuff?

[bbtom]

1. Start eBay auction.
2. ???
3. PROFIT!!

Info from Vanu, Inc.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm CTO at Vanu, Inc. Here's some additional info that some posters to this thread have asked about.

- Linux version: we're using a Debian 2.4 release with the real time patches. All the signal processing code runs as an standard application level process.

- A/D and D/A: we're using an external RF front end that provides over 90 dB spurious free dynamic range. The poster who said these are big and hot was right; it's a little smaller than a PC case all by itself, with a hefty fan to dissipate the heat of the power amp. It covers 25 MHz worth of spectrum and costs a lot more than the HP server that does the signal processing.

- software features: the linux applications running on the HP server handle the complete transmit and receive chains. We go from raw digital samples on one side (exchanged with the A/D and D/A converters) to voice and data packets on the other. A separate HP server runs the Base Station Controller functions, which are the protocol logic, handover control, and similar functions.

- reliability: a huge advantage of building the GSM software on top of linux is that it's portable. Some operators want the level of reliability that comes with commercial grade servers; some want the level that comes with telco grade servers. The GSM basestation software runs on whatever they need.

It's great to see how much interest there is in the slashdot community about this.

-john chapin

Re:Info from Vanu, Inc.

[Anonymous Coward]

John,

Just out of curiosity, is there any reason why you didn't re-engineer an x86 motherboard to telco grade standards (better on-board components, better RAM, flash storage, etc.) rather than use commercial grade components, or is it just more cost/hassle than it's worth?

Re:Info from Vanu, Inc.

[Anonymous Coward]

Rather than doing any board engineering, it's simpler to move the software to an existing telco grade certified server for customers who need that level of quality. There are many x86 based options.

-john

Re:Info from Vanu, Inc.

[chotahead]

A/D and D/A: we're using an external RF front end that provides over 90 dB spurious free dynamic range. The poster who said these are big and hot was right; it's a little smaller than a PC case all by itself, with a hefty fan to dissipate the heat of the power amp. It covers 25 MHz worth of spectrum and costs a lot more than the HP server that does the signal processing.

Aye. Here's the rub. Big, hot, expensive, and the most critical piece of the puzzle. It's big, which is a problem for BST real-estate, often a very expensive part of the overall system. It's hot, which is a HUGE reliability problem in the real world (fans & thermal effects). It's expensive, because it's essentially a custom device with no commodity leverage. It's critical because the Vanu architecture digitizes & backhauls RF, which is a critical path function (note that this probably requires upwards of 400Mbps between antenna & controller ... whew!!).

In other words, to make this type of system "carrier grade" and "highly available" (errrm ... 6+ nines), this A/D-D/A subsystem will have to be at least doubly redundant on a per-base-station basis. So, instead of concentrating the high-value, high-sensitivity components at the core of the network, they're concentrated at the edge, which is counterintuitive at the very least. Without significant improvements in (a) speed, (b) reliability, (c) cost/form-factor, and (d) commodity leverage for the converter technology, this sort of system architecture is facing a very steep uphill battle. IMHO.

Because I read the article, you half-wit

[FatSean]

"Researchers have successfully tested a system that can replace a cellular tower's room full of communications hardware with a single desk-top style computer, making the technology affordable for small, rural communities."

From http://www.nsf.gov/od/lpa/news/03/pr03117.htm which is the OFFICIAL PRESS RELEASE.

A single desktop. Sounds incredibly stupid to me. I mean, you gotta cough up the cash for the antenna and transmission equipment, why cheap out on the hardware? Sometimes saving money doesn't make sense.

Journalistic Ignorance

[StarKruzr]

Remember that reporters rarely know much about technology. To them, everything is a "Pentium," including the monitor. These are probably P4/2.0GHz or at least a high-end P-III, not an i586-generation machine running at 120MHz.

small towm only

[spectrokid]

This is going to be geared towards small communities with maybe 5 simultaneous conversations. I don't think they'll be using this in the arrival hall at JFK. And the big boys nowadays have to get their revenue from 3G toys anyway...

But can it work on 2.4GHz...?

[no_such_user]

So if we're now able to make carrier-quality telecom equipment that runs on fairly run-of-the-mill PCs, why are we still paying $50/mo to our mobile phone companies? Think of the revolution that's happening with 802.11, and now imagine a Linksys GSM Router sitting at home next to your Wi-Fi box. Of course our governments would never allow this to take place; who would pay billions to claim stake to the airwaves if we could build our own homegrown networks?

In reality, we'd probably NOT have personal GSM routers as I mentioned above... instead, we'd have community organizations sponsoring local sites, paid for and maintained by their users. Interconnected with other communities, it would form a massive network of telecom co-ops. If linked by microwave, you might not even need to involve your local utilities one bit.

I'm not suggesting that we dismantle the existing mobile networks; however, they are truly OUR airwaves. If we could see to it that a mobile network running on hardware like this were to be built using non- or minimally-licensed (community licensed?) bandwidth, a couple of years of network instability and growth could build a true grass-roots, free-as-in-speech-AND-beer telecom network.

Who's with me?

Re:But can it work on 2.4GHz...?

[scottj]

One reason we're still paying so much is that this stuff isn't commercially available yet. This was just the first trial. It will be a year or more before the carriers are even able to get this stuff, and then they still have to roll it out.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Vanu makes some excellent products.

[Ride-My-Rocket]

After all, with items like the MagRider and the Pulsar, who could live to disagree?

New Verizon commercial

[IGnatius T Foobar]

"Can you hear me now? Good! You now owe $799 to SCO!"

Oh great...

[Anonymous Coward]

I had enough trouble with dropped calls WITHOUT Intel involved...

Winmodem?

[ronmon]

That's one of the first things I thought of and then realized that there are two important differences.

1) It was designed from the ground up to run on Linux. Possibly the biggest problem that 'linmodem' driver developers had was getting specs from manufacturers. Obviously that's not an issue here.

2) When winmodems first appeared in the early Pentium days, resources were scarce. Running one on a desktop system that had lots of other things needing those same resorces was a problem. Now even most low end PCs have power to spare. The boxes used in their test were Proliant servers that were dedicated to the task. I don't see that as a bottleneck.

Well, it's certainly a start to dream

[commie_pig]

Well, whether or not this will take off on a large scale, remains to be seen. It would be great if it did, and I really think that this would be "true" consumerism - the consumers really get what they want (although it might take some time to convince a whole lot of people that this is what they want :)).

To get back to the topic, moves such as these (specialized equipment to linux boxes) are indicative of the money that gets wasted on building proprietary hardware (and software). This at least, should help to convince those who need convincing, that money could be better spent elsewhere.

Now we just need to realise that paying a CEO $100 Mil a year is bad for everyone (except him, but who cares?), and the total savings would make technology more affordable, and society at large more productive and pleasant.

Vanu? New Conglomerate? Terran Republic?

[TrapperMarkelz]

Damn... I thought this was an article about some new addition to PlanetSide.

Can somebody explain?

[Frit Mock]

Can somebody explain me ... I am a complete noob, you know ... what is a harddrive with 80GB and a maximum transferspeed of 100 MB/s ?? ;)

Re:Nonsense

[Anonymous Coward]

heh heh...you said "erect"

Vanu Sovereignty has new technology?

[CrystalFalcon]

This is outrageous! I demand that Terrans and the NCs get something equally cool!

Or at least that I get a chance to try this new stuff out myself.

(whaddayaknow, the sad thing is that nobody will get this reference) :-)

Re:Vanu Sovereignty has new technology?

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's the reference for ya. First thing I thought of when I read the headline as well - what are the Vanu doing with cell phone towers?

However, it would be in keeping with the VS "style". TR would get a laser tower, NC a tesla tower or something - VS would get a nifty cell phone tower that looked pretty but was completely worthless in a fight. All Hail The Common Pool Weapons Empire!

(My main character is a high ranking VS on Johari).

Aha!

[sharkey]

Pentium-based computer

So that's why my phone keeps trying to dial 0.99834664850!

There's a downside

[poot_rootbeer]

The downside of this plan?

The form factor for the PC case is 600 meters tall.

Cool story but a bigger thanks

[CompWerks]

for the link to science daily - just heard of it for the first time, some great stuff there.

Reliability of Infrastructure

[Anonymous Coward]

Look how things have changed over the years - in the 1960's the communications switching facilities filled a building the size of a Home Depot, and most of the Long Lines microwave and L-carrier facilities were buried underground and hardened against a 20MT nuclear blast 5 miles away. Now we are considering commoditized PC arcitecture to replace the specialized equipment at the base of the cell tower housed in what amounts to a lawn shed purchased at the after mentioned Home Depot. All in the name of cost and efficiency of course...

Is any thought given to physical security anymore? Is it jast cheap cheap cheap and to hell if it breaks down or is destroyed by natural or man made disaster?

Population distribution

[Anonymous Coward]

Most people live in the so-called "growth centers", that is the capital city area Helsinki, and the biggest cities. But there are people around the country, of course. In Lapland (that's the Northernmost parts of Finland) I've heard stories that it's not unusual for the people to travel like 100 km to the post office (I guess it must've meant state booze monopoly store).

There's still very rural places in the most densely populated areas. Just go from Helsinki to Espoo and admire all the farm houses and fields. Finland is quite spacious where everyone lives in the "lande", even the cocky Helsinki-dwellers (even if they won't admit it).

More information about Finland here and here.

Vanu!

[ChristianBaekkelund]

The Vanu Sovreignty rocks...always kicks the Terran Replubic's and New Conglomerate's all over the planet and back!... ;)

yes, well...

[Anonymous Coward]

The systems have been tested for the last several months in parts of Texas

Perhaps they can start firing it off in my area as my coverage sucks. Field work is not even an option with cell phones unless cattle can act as signal repeaters. (hmmm, that may confuse the elite here... don't worry you can still live in your fantasy world where "rednecks" are just stupid hicks ignorant of technology)

and why would it be entirely different?

[nietsch]

SDR is just a way to put hardware design into software. the bandwidth you can get with SDR is limited by the bandthwidt of the adc. As you can buy soundcards that can do 90KHz sampling (i assume you can get the output in the same quality) that means quite a few channels for the phones to use, and that is not even dedcated or designed hardware.
It is quite an advantage if you can listen on all channels at the same time (which is the strong point of SDR) when you are dealing with frequency hopping devices like GSM or CDMA.
If you would want to do that in analog you'd need a tuner for every channel the basestation uses. That is why it means such a reduction in hardware size.

Most SDR BTW uses an intermediate frequency that is modulated up to the desired frequency in hardware. (processor speed has not yet reached speeds of 9 18 or 19 GHz yet is it?)

Re:and why would it be entirely different?

[Detritus]

A single GSM channel is about 180 kHz wide. If you mixed it down to a 90 kHz IF, which is probably unrealistic, you would need an ADC that could sample at better than 360 kHz. Now you need a DSP, or CPU, with enough horsepower to do something useful with the data. That's a new sample every 2.7 microseconds. How many simultaneous channels are supported by a typical GSM base station?

It's been done, although usually with DSPs

[Animats]

Cell phone base station equipment has used software-defined radios for a while now. The first ones appeared around 1996. Watkins-Johnson discontinued such a product in 1998. Without them, multichannel CDMA would be really expensive. With them, it's affordable. It's been years since base stations had one physical radio per call.

It's neat that Vanu is doing this on Linux, but it's not like it's a revolutionary technology breakthrough.

There's still an analog RF radio involved; all the digital processing is at the IF frequency. Digital signal processing of raw RF in the gigahertz range is still a bit out of reach. (And it will require an A/D with huge dynamic range.)

It's not clear that it's a win to do this using commodity PC hardware. Most of the crunching is in tight signal-processing loops that don't use much memory. With custom boards, you can have more CPUs on a board. Squeezing the physical size down matters in this application. If you can put the gear in a box on the pole, instead of needing a little shed, that's a big win. PCs also tend to use more power, and thus generate more heat, than DSPs per MIPS. Cooling all the gear is a constant headache in the cellular business. It typically doubles the power consumption, and the air conditioners themselves are maintenance headaches. What the industry wants is gear that doesn't require air conditioning, at least for smaller sites. Qualicomm has been shipping pole-mounted CDMA base stations since 1997.

It's also not clear that introducing a network between the radios and the processors helps reliability. If the radios are flexible enough that one can take over the job of another, it's easier to fail out a radio/processor pair and switch in another one.

None of this matters all that much because the cellular base station equipment industry is in the tank. The industry overexpanded based on forecasts of huge needs for 3G gear, and that didn't happen.

FCC Mandate

[Detritus]

From http://www.telemetric.net/pdfs/analog-digital.pdf

In February of 2003, the FCC modified Part 22 of its rule that covers cellular telephones and other services. Among the rule changes adopted by the commission is the amendment of sections 22.901 and 22.933, governing support of AMPS. These documents can be found at http://www.fcc.gov/. In effect, the ruling states that cellular carriers must provide analog service compatible with the AMPS specification for at least the next 5 years. The FCC has provided no changes that would allow carriers to degrade the quality of service during this period. At the end of this period, carriers may choose to no longer support analog service. The FCC will review the effects of this ruling at the end of the third and fourth years. Based on the outcome of these reviews, the FCC may extend the analog services requirement beyond the five years.

There are outstanding issues with hearing aid compatibility and other equipment that is dependent on AMPS.

I need your help

[dan501]

my husband amassed a multi million dollar fortune rolling out pc based cellular telephone service in nigeria. but a regime change has left me stranded and my husband incarcerated.
using this new "telephone service", I called "information" in your area to find YOU and beg for your help.
I need to escape nigeria with my husband's fortune. if you help me, I will gladly share half my fortune and my daugher with you! all I need is your "telephone number" and I will be able to escape this country with our money and daughter.

I hear she's very good.

Software needs hardware, which does get hot

[yerricde]

Fortunately, software doesn't get hot.

Tell that to an Athlon owner. An Athlon processor can run more software per second, but it sure does heat the room.

GNU Radio?

[sglines]

Is this the first commercial manifestation of GNU Radio? If so, Cool.

what about low power?

[WhiteDragon]

Is it legal to broadcast/recieve extremely low power transmissions on the cell phone frequencies w/o a license from the fcc?

SDR

[clv101]

This is nothing more than an incomplete Software Defined Radio GSM implementation. It's missing:

Advanced features desired by network operators: encryption, diversity antennae, frequency hopping, etc. Similarly, support for data protocols - HSCSD, GPRS and EDGE - will be deployed to basestations as software upgrades..."

This makes it far from ready for live networks.