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

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

[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: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: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.

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.

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.

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?