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Build Your Own Cell tower
BlakeCaldwell writes "If you're the type who dreads being dragged kicking and screaming into the use of a cell phone, Samsung sells their Long Range Cordless Phone. With an incredible (for landlines) 30-mile range, the set includes a caller ID-capable LCD and is able to communicate with the base-station, acting as an intercom."
This sounds to me like it'll be short-lived. More than ten people in your neighborhood get one and it's all over.
who needs? well, someone who wishes to call cheaper to mobiles than what landlines allow.
one of the points of why landlines in normal everyday usage between normal people around here is used less and less is that practically every time you would be calling to a cellular phone - and calling to a cellular phone from a landline costs generally more than if you called to it from another cellular phone.
with this beast i'd worry more about how man of these things can be used at a time in a certain area(because the are a is HUGE).
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Only friends and family know my cellphone number and perhaps my car garage.
I've never been bothered by telemarketers on my cell phone yet. With this, you can get harrassed by them all day long.
With this, you'll need to leave town to get peace and quiet.
How bout a few people in every city buy a base station. I wonder if the phones will hop between cells??? We could create an open source cell phone network with no monthly charges across the world. Just need a little Internet bandwidth, and some VOIP...
These have been around for years. Why is this news? They are not legal for general use in the US.
So, what I would like to know is: why is there no cell phone specifically designed for home use? If the cellphone companies want us to get rid of landlines why have they not designed phones that can actually be used in a home environment?
I was a sucker for car phones: much better reception, easier to hold and work with than those tiny cellphones.
I want a 'stationary' cellphone for the house with an antenna on the roof for excellent reception so I don't have to use my tiny little cell phone.
That would explain the results you get when entering "Samsung Super Long Range Phone" into google. It's really a shame we can't convince /. editors to google the subjects of stories before submitting them. I guess that's our job.
They normally use HAM radio frequencies or comercial VHF/UHF. Due to the fact that they are only certified in China it is illegal to use in most countries.
This explains why you don't see these for sale in the US anywhere... it's clearly not a new product, and if someone did come up with a way to do this legally ( and in a manner that would allow everyone in town to have such a phone- say a wide-spectrum mesh network device or something ), it'd be big, big news. Too bad this isn't something like that- instead, it's just more crap to clutter HAM frequencies and/or screw up over-the-air broadcasts. Only the stupid and extremely anti-social would even consider purchasing such a thing in most developed countries...
Me, I'm not to afraid of low-level RF emissions- I think my cell phone probably won't give me cancer... but you do have to wonder what sort of radiation *this* sucker puts out...
Nothing to look at here, folks, move along...
You're not going to get anything close to 30 miles out of 2.4 GHz while still staying within FCC limits AND being mobile.
If he is a licenced ham radio operator, I doubt the amplifier is using is in any way "illegal".
:-)
I'm not sure what the maximum power output is in the United States, but here in Sweden, a licenced radio amateur operator can put out up to 1 kW or so without any additional license.
And, being a ham radio operator, you don't actually have to use equiment certified by anyone. Part of the reason you have to take an exam to become a ham radio operator, is to demonstrate they you know what you're doing. Amateur radio is the only service I'm aware of (other than possibly the military) that doesn't require its users to use type approved equiment.
Now CB radio however, that's a completely different story. Any idiot can go to his local electronics store and buy himself a CB rig capable of putting out 5 W of power with a microphone and jabber into it.
Now if he is a CB radio operator -- if he's using any amplifier at all, it's probably very illegal -- and usually of poor quality with lots of nice harmonics.
So how can you tell if your friendly neighbour with the amplifier is a licenced radio amateur running QRO on HF, or if he's an illegal CB operator?
Well. One way to tell is by the way he talks on the radio. You said that you have equipment capable of receiving his transmissions (your computer speakers
According to regulations, all amateur radio stations must identify with their callsign and the callsign of the other party on a regular basis in their contacts. Listen for callsigns -- usually 5-6 characters long with one or more numbers in it -- my callsign is SM0YUF, somebody in the US would probably have a callsign starting with A, N or W, or maybe some other letter that escapes me at the moment. You can look up who owns a certain callsign on http://www.qrz.com/.
If the transmissions contain no callsigns whatsoever, chances are that he's in fact an illegal CB operator, in which case, in theory, you could contact the FCC using the magic word "CB" rather than "ham radio", and hopefully you might make some progress.
Hope this helps. Oh, and do look into those papers with toroids and ferrites. If he is in fact a licenced radio amateur, he is well within his rights, and your equiment is shoddy. Sorry.
73 de SM0YUF
Sure, but take it to your vacation spot in a Mexican port town, like the gabbiest folks in these forums have, and you can use it to your heart's content. Until, of course, too many other folks do and the interference levels start rising....
In a related story, the IRS has recently ruled that the cost of Windows upgrades can NOT be deducted as a gambling loss.
Your TV can't cause interferance, and you have to accept what interferance your TV picks up, but he/she is a licensed user of that spectrum and you're not.
He's got all the rights and you've got none.
All kinds of people make portable VOIP phones, you just connect to your VOIP-enabled router or tunnel to a PC. Cisco, for starters, at the high-end:
s 37 9/ps5056/index.html
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/hw/phones/p
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"