Burning Man Goes Open Source For Cell Phones

coondoggie passes along this excerpt from Network World: "Today I bring you a story that has it all: a solar-powered, low-cost, open source cellular network that's revolutionizing coverage in underprivileged and off-grid spots. It uses VoIP yet works with existing cell phones. It has pedigreed founders. Best of all, it is part of the sex, drugs and art collectively known as Burning Man. ... The technology starts with the 'they-said-it-couldn't-be-done' open source software, OpenBTS. OpenBTS is built on Linux and distributed via the AGPLv3 license. When used with a software-defined radio such as the Universal Software Radio Peripheral (USRP), it presents a GSM air interface ("Um") to any standard GSM cell phone, with no modification whatsoever required of the phone. It uses open source Asterisk VoIP software as the PBX to connect calls, though it can be used with other soft switches, too. ... This is the third year its founders have decided to trial-by-fire the system by offering free cell phone service to the 50,000-ish attendees at Burning Man, which begins today in Black Rock City, Nevada. "

Comments

Bummer

[joebok]

I haven't been to Burning Man in a few years, but when I did go it was nice to get away from it all. I suppose I could choose to not use/bring my cell phone - but if other people are still tethered to the ordinary world...? Well - bummer!

Re:I may have read that one wrong

[bertoelcon]

There's certainly a lot of overlap between the techie crowd and the hippie crowd. Steve Jobs, for example, experimented with LSD.

Jobs never has been been really a techie though, he is more of a hipster businessman.

Wait.

[_KiTA_]

Is this the same Burning Man that claims copyright on any PRIVATE photos taken at their events?

PASS. Horrible IP grab + single Open Source project is still a negative, methinks.

Re:Wait.

[_KiTA_]

I've never been to Burning Man, I've been to other free-love-get-high-hippy-alt-fests so I "get" the point of it, but I don't understand how the Open Source community can stomach Burning Man's copyright claims.

On paper it sounds really good. "We have a bunch of nudists and hippies (and exhibitionsts) that show up and walk around naked for most of the event. We don't want voyeurs to be getting their rocks off on them."

Then they went after private photographers own galleries, and the Wiki Commons. Oh, and they sell their own DVDs. Complete coincidence, there.

Unfortunately Burning Man itself has kinda become mainstream. It's less about art and free love and the like, and more about college guys getting drunk/stoned and harassing girls, trying to get them to strip. I imagine there are other, better, alt-fests around, but the closest thing I get to Hippydome is reading Brad Warner's series of Zen books.

Re:Wait.

[blhack]

They do this to prevent people from going there, taking pictures, and selling a "BURNERS GONE WILD!" calendar or something like it.

They're preventing *others* from profiting off of photos of burners, not profiting off of them themselves.

This is generally considered a good thing.

Re:License?

[Anonymous Coward]

Their FAQ, http://pagalegba2010.wikispaces.com/FAQ, has a link to the experimental FCC license: http://openbts.sourceforge.net/FieldTest3/STAGrant.pdf

Re:License?

[TubeSteak]

Ummm, I'm confused. The frequencies that GSM uses are licensed by the FCC to specific operators. The phones are used under the control of the operator, who has a license for each and every cell site.

It's the confusion born from not RTFAing.

GSM operates on licensed bandwidth, so for any U.S. installation, the OpenBTS crew always obtains a FCC license and works with the local carrier to coordinate frequency use. When attendees get into range and power up their phones, the system sends them a text that says "Reply to this message with your phone number and you can send and receive text messages and make voice calls."

I'm guessing the person who modded you up didn't RTFA either.

Burning Man: Disneyland for Marketing Suits

[RobotRunAmok]

Burning Man had its brief, shining moment, but when was that...? Circa mid-90's? Now it's a staged pseudo-event the very promotion of which cuts against the grain of what it was supposed to be. I see the jowly middle-aged Marketing Suits queuing up for their Burning Man tickets and I am reminded of the giddy tourists in and around Woodstock, NY paying $25 for a tie-dyed peace-sign T-shirt.

Re:Encryption?

[abulafia]

Have you ever been? It is the population density of a city, modulo the multistory units (except for the nuts who do build those). I don't know what the plan this year is (I'm missing it this year, sniff), but last year, the camp radius was 2100 feet, putting the vast bulk of those 50K people in a 1-mile diameter area. Not many people camp in "deep playa" (the burner term for the area outside of the radial roads but inside the trash perimeter).

Back on topic, there's been signal there for at least the last three years, but it became useless once the gates opened and the hordes descended. My take is that cell service during the main event is going to be a net negative, but it is inevitable. It will become something akin to the ongoing war on glow sticks - a bunch of us will mercilessly mock glow-stuck cellphone users and try to shame them into putting the fucking things down and be present, and it mostly won't work.

Those of us who do LNT (Leave No Trace, the massive cleanup effort post event) will get to ground score cellphones, though. People lose everything else.