[OpenRelief Developer] Down the line: restoring GSM communications/using GSM communications

[Shane Coughlan]

Hi Andrew

I met and spoke with Harald at the European Legal Network Conference on Thursday and Friday. He told me that the ballpark figure per unit was around 2,000 Euro. Obviously that's putting it outside of our target price for the base platform, but this type of technology could be very useful as a clip-in module.

What I suggest is that we head to launch with the basic airframe, the radiation module and the weather module. Then after launch we try to get funding to obtain development units of the telco system, and take it from there.

Shane

On Apr 17, 2012, at 5:04 PM, Andrew Back wrote:
> Hi Shane,
> 
> It's very exciting to finally see a few more details about the
> upcoming sysmoBTS which, like the osmocom family of software projects,
> is an incredible achievement and opens up all sorts of exciting
> possibilities.
> 
> Have you heard any indicative pricing for the hardware?
> 
> Once we arrive at a point where we would like to look more closely at
> using this I'd be keen to help out. I've just helped one group through
> the process of filling out an application to Ofcom for a low power
> test licence, and we could do the same for sysmoBTS testing. Although
> an airborne GSM BTS, with it's elevated height and no fixed location,
> may prove more of a challenge in terms of securing a licence! We'd
> almost certainly have to stick to as small an area as possible and
> keep the TX power very low, but this should be sufficient in terms of
> proving the approach and giving us some preliminary figures.
> 
> Best regards,
> 
> Andrew
> 
> On 16 April 2012 18:40, Shane Coughlan <shane at openrelief.org> wrote:
>> Dear all
>> 
>> This is not directly applicable to our launch system, but I thought it might be worth nothing at this junction. Harald Welte's company is preparing to launch a new GSM system incorporating sysmoBTS, osmo-bts, osmo-bsc, osmo-nitb, osmo-bsc_mgcp, lcr, osmo-bsc_nat, and other programs. The datasheet is attached, but essentially it's a 13 Watt system. It transmits at 200mW and would essentially be line-of-sight, though hypothetically running at 10 times the Tx power (2W instead of 200mW) would only require an additional 15W in the drone, and give around a half-kilo or more range.
>> 
>> This system allows people to terminate and switch GSM voice calls, send/receive/store and forward SMS, and even offer data services. It uses SIP for voice and sqlite3 for storing SMS messages. The tool itself does not support meshing/auto-config/routing. That's where something like the VillageTelco technology might come in.
>> 
>> Anyway, my point is that very interesting tools are on the horizon for restoring telephony. We should keep that in mind.
>> 
>> Regards
>> 
>> Shane
>> 
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>> 
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> Andrew Back
> http://carrierdetect.com
> 
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