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

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.