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Low-Cost DIY Cell Network Runs On Solar

Posted by timothy on from the seattle-wireless dept.

Shareable writes with word of the intriguing work of a Berkeley professor who has developed a "low-cost, low-power cell base station featuring easy, off-the grid deployment with solar or wind power; local services autonomous from national carriers; and an impressive portfolio of voice & data services (not just GSM). It's designed to connect rural areas in the developing world, but could have wider application like disaster recovery."

1 of 77 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Disaster Recovery? by ColaMan · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Look outside your tiny world a bit and realise that a large chunk of the world has settled on GSM for their phones.

    A Quad-Band GSM phone would have no trouble connecting to something like this. With regards to licenses - if you're having to install something like this because of disaster recovery, then you can pretty much assume that any administrative level of government has its hands full with other stuff.

    On a related note, there's an open-source GSM stack available, with a real-world island installation that (seems to) work fine -

    http://openbts.sourceforge.net/

    --

    You are in a twisty maze of processor lines, all alike.
    There is a lot of hype here.