Thoughts on community GSM?

whytek

Hi all,

What does anybody think about the idea of a community GSM Network?

Specifically, should one or two channels in the spectrum be made available for public usage (still regulated somehow), or do you think the major players should just have the whole spectrum?

What about going forward.. Do you think GSM900 might go away at some point?

Thanks!

k.

Mr. G

I can't tell the future with regards GSM900. I would say that RegTel wouldn't allow it, with Vodafone meteor/emobile o2 3 just mobile and tesco behind their backs with pressure, and threats it wouldn't be easy. How wouod you get a license !
What about a network (of some sort) that is cheap pay as you use, community support etc etc. Would be good though

spoonface

whytek wrote: »

Hi all,

What does anybody think about the idea of a community GSM Network?

Specifically, should one or two channels in the spectrum be made available for public usage (still regulated somehow), or do you think the major players should just have the whole spectrum?

What about going forward.. Do you think GSM900 might go away at some point?

Thanks!

k.

It wouldn't work out because it would require a major investment both in terms of buying the equipment, setting it up, running it ongoing and organising the whole thing e.g. billing etc. The only reason all this trouble is gone to is if a state does it or if the venture foresees making a profit out of it. Running a network is not a cheap thing, so it requires lots of paying customers to cover its costs.
So it's nice in theory but it wouldn't be a goer. If you want to communicate with lots of people for relatively cheap, go with CB's or the internet.

whytek

Valid points.

Grumpy, If I were to say, that regtel/comreg exist to ensure that the spectrum is regulated and used in the best interests of the people, would that change the immediate response of they would never allow it..?

(I totally agree, by the way, they WOULD never allow it, not without a LOT of presure.)

spoonface, sorry, but i didn't ask about the logistics of running the network, I asked about the spectrum allocation for a community network, not a commercial one. That saves the costs of billing. You're assuming too much about the motivations of my question. And actually, setting up one cell is quite cheap.

rmacm

Aside from the cost of a single cell, you'd also need something to do call control and possibly a BSC (not sure about the BSC bit, Wireline is my area of expertise). I guess you could try something like OpenBTS which uses Asterisk for call control.

As for the radio spectrum, I'd say you'd be very lucky if you got any allocated for something like this.

whytek

I want to go back and re-emphasize my question.

Do you think that there should be an allocation of spectrum to community GSM?

What does the phrase 'community GSM' conjure up in your mind?

Please.. I know the technical details, I know the costs.. if you want to discuss that, open a thread, I would like this to be about whether you think there should be an allocation, not speculation on whether or not one would get it.

rmacm

whytek wrote: »

I want to go back and re-emphasize my question.

Do you think that there should be an allocation of spectrum to community GSM?

Not something I've thought about to be honest. Thinking about it briefly there are probably situations where it would be useful.

whytek wrote: »

What does the phrase 'community GSM' conjure up in your mind?

A small rural community with bad coverage from the main players. They get together and pool some money and set up their own small GSM network.

Last

Are you suggesting some frequency allocation where a community group or groups would set up a network or some channel allocation riding on some existing commercial network?

You ask "What does the phrase 'community GSM' conjure up in your mind?". To tell the truth I find it difficult to conjure up anything. Could you give me a taste of what you are thinking so that it might provoke some thoughts.

spoonface

whytek wrote: »

spoonface, sorry, but i didn't ask about the logistics of running the network, I asked about the spectrum allocation for a community network, not a commercial one. That saves the costs of billing. You're assuming too much about the motivations of my question. And actually, setting up one cell is quite cheap.

Actually you asked a very wide open "what does anybody think..." question, which I answered with my thoughts, followed by a specific question which I didn't answer. So there's no need to get all snotty. Your thread has been a failure in any case, possible because you lashed out at actual answers you received.

whytek wrote: »

What does anybody think about the idea of a community GSM Network?

Mr. G

Getting regtel to allow a community network would be impossible.

What would be possible is to have a community voip company (or such) to allow cheap calls, if that's what you mean.
Of course, it would require everyone having an internet connection. I would be happy to be involved with that.

Hth

Solair

RegTel was the old, now defunct, premium rate telephone numbering system self-regulator (owned by the industry).

ComReg is the Telecommunications Regulation Agency owned by the State. (It also now regulates the premium rate phone / SMS services)

I don't think that community GSM is likely anytime soon. The costs would still be prohibitive to roll out a national network and a local network wouldn't necessarily serve much of a purpose. You'd need roaming agreements with other national operators etc etc.

Kensington

whytek wrote: »

What about going forward.. Do you think GSM900 might go away at some point?

Thanks!

k.

There are already plans underway by ComReg to shut down GSM in the 900MHz band here in Ireland. Elsewhere, the global shutdown has already begun in places, being replaced with UMTS 3G / 4G LTE.

Vodafone and O2's GSM900MHz licences are due to expire this year, Meteor's is due to expire in 2015.
Vodafone and O2 aren't to happy with their imminent loss of 900MHz spectrum for GSM though, due to the power/propagation characteristics of 900MHz vs the other GSM band at 1800MHz.

whytek

spoonface wrote: »

Actually you asked a very wide open "what does anybody think..." question, which I answered with my thoughts, followed by a specific question which I didn't answer. So there's no need to get all snotty. Your thread has been a failure in any case, possible because you lashed out at actual answers you received.

OK, you are right, I did indeed write that that question on one line. I subsequently followed it with a qualifying line. My mistake, I should have revised my original question.

Thanks for the rest of your input, especially for pointing out that billing infrastrcture is a major cost, and eliminating it is a major saving.

If I come across as snotty, it's because I lose patience with this unimaginative, immediate and somewhat arrogant knocking down of ideas that characterises ireland. I'm sorry if that offends, but I'm going to call a spade a spade here. I suppose that sounds personal too. but if you will call the thread a failure, i have to defend it, which is also what comes across as "lashing out at the actual answers" (yours, which are unfactual).

Do you have some vested interest that makes you attack the idea so vehemently?

whytek

Solair wrote: »

I don't think that community GSM is likely anytime soon. The costs would still be prohibitive to roll out a national network and a local network wouldn't necessarily serve much of a purpose. You'd need roaming agreements with other national operators etc etc.

Not necesarily.. that all depends on whether anybody would see the value in having a short range two-way radio network, which is in fact what it is.
You could connect the local network into other networks via fee paying services, but even without that it would still have a value.
Of course, outside the village your phone has no service. You could just have another, commercial phone for that, if desired.

Kensington wrote: »

There are already plans underway by ComReg to shut down GSM in the 900MHz band here in Ireland. Elsewhere, the global shutdown has already begun in places, being replaced with UMTS 3G / 4G LTE.

Vodafone and O2 aren't to happy with their imminent loss of 900MHz spectrum for GSM though, due to the power/propagation characteristics of 900MHz vs the other GSM band at 1800MHz.

Thanks. I didn't know that ComReg had such plans.

Yes! The propagation characteristics make 900 the most suitable for single cell low simultaneous call capacity local rural network. I imagine that the cell density at this point makes it less necesary. Any idea on what plans there are for re-allocation of the 900 Mhz band?

Last wrote: »

Are you suggesting some frequency allocation where a community group or groups would set up a network or some channel allocation riding on some existing commercial network?

Could you give me a taste of what you are thinking so that it might provoke some thoughts.

An example would be really basic autonomous comunications. Certainly not riding on an existing commercial network. There are plently of handsets about that are no longer used. Most if not all of these are GSM 900 capable. If GSM 900 is no longer used commercially, then the idea would be to pressure ComReg to allocate some of that specturm to community use. It would be really cheap to setup a local rural network so that somebody could for example phone or text the local shop to ask them if the papers came in yet, or to the pub to see if somebody is there, or to call for help! That kind of thing. It would be a way to get away from the "real-world" phone numbers, but to not be cut off entirely from the benefits of having a phone.

whytek

Mr_Grumpy wrote: »

Getting regtel to allow a community network would be impossible.

As I said before, it's important to point out that ComReg is a regulatory body, that exists to ensure that communications work for everyone. They (just like the govt.) should not be allowed to make policy desicions that go against the wishes of the people. Of course, the reality is other.

I'm not suggesting that at this time, people want community GSM networks, by the way!

Solair

I'd just like to point out that while 2G GSM may be approaching the end of its life expectancy over the next few years, there is absolutely no plan to abandon the 900Mhz and 1800Mhz spectrum that has been used for GSM thus far.

The most likely scenario is that the 900Mhz band will be reallocated for use with UMTS (3G) and even LTE (4G) services.

900Mhz has much better propagation characteristics than 2100Mhz, currently used for UMTS. I would suspect that what will happen is the number of channels allocated for GSM 2G will be reduced and an increasing number of channels opened up to UMTS instead.

The number of non-3G handsets is rapidly shrinking as people upgrade, so the load on the GSM network is naturally reducing anyway as time goes on. So, it won't need quite as many channels as it did at peak.

Many newer handsets already support UMTS 900Mhz so they are already capable of connecting to such services.

Also, there are big advantages in terms of capacity to using UMTS instead of GSM as it makes much more efficient use of the bandwidth available. GSM 2G is pretty old technology at this stage.

Because of the signal propagation characteristics of 900Mhz, there is absolutely no way that the commercial providers will be giving up this spectrum at any stage in the future. If anything, it's more likely that they might ultimately abandon the 2100Mhz that this first generation of 3G devices is using once 900Mhz and 1800Mhz 3G becomes more normal.

However, the most likely scenario is that the primary UMTS frequencies will be 900Mhz/1800mhz like existing GSM with 2100Mhz being used to provide extra bandwidth for data.

There's also some possibility of opening up 800Mhz, 850Mhz and 2600Mhz

All of this stuff is moving towards UMTS based technology i.e. 3G/4G using WCDMA (which incidentally has nothing to do with the old Qualcomm CDMA networks used in the United States by Verizon etc, they are proprietary technology)

So, perhaps there might be some space for community UMTS / LTE in the future. You could potentially hang such a network onto a MAN in a town and provide services in that limited area for data or voice.

spoonface

whytek wrote: »

OK, you are right, I did indeed write that that question on one line. I subsequently followed it with a qualifying line. My mistake, I should have revised my original question.

Thanks for the rest of your input, especially for pointing out that billing infrastrcture is a major cost, and eliminating it is a major saving.

If I come across as snotty, it's because I lose patience with this unimaginative, immediate and somewhat arrogant knocking down of ideas that characterises ireland. I'm sorry if that offends, but I'm going to call a spade a spade here. I suppose that sounds personal too. but if you will call the thread a failure, i have to defend it, which is also what comes across as "lashing out at the actual answers" (yours, which are unfactual).

Do you have some vested interest that makes you attack the idea so vehemently?

Vested interest, call it that if you want or call it a dose of reality from actually working for mobile network operators all around the world since 1997. Do you have actual experience working with GSM professionally and knowing something of what's involved in building and operating mobile networks? I do so that's what I'm working from. You say I've been unfactual but give no specific instance of that.

I think what you're envisaging isn't a winning proposition mainly because it's so small scale that it does not at all benefit from economies of scale. For example, if you have a community of say 5000 people you can only divide the capital and operational costs by 5000 instead of say by a million for a major network in Ireland.

Did you envisage it operating completely in a bubble or have interworking
with other mobile operators so that calls can be terminated in either direction? This would require commercial contracts with the other networks and termination costs. Again, scale is an issue i.e. why would O2 etc wish to deal with a small town's local community GSM project?

If you're sure this idea is a goer, then go for it and make it happen in your local community. If you're serious about this, please begin with posting here a list of the hardware involved to get yourself kitted out with a community GSM-compliant network and the costs for it. Siemens, Alkatel and the like do not sell their kit cheaply. You will probably say you only want to discuss this in theory but it's where theory and practice meet that you'll see whether this idea is really a goer.

whytek

spoonface, thanks for the input.

Obviously one can't just go for it and make it happen, because the whole thing is ultimately controlled by the industry via (in ireland) ComReg. So the first thing to do is to see if there would be enough interest to generate pressure politically to have some channels assigned to local "community" use, and a good time to do this is probably NOW, when changes are being made to the spectrum allocation. (if the allocations are not already set in stone, i fear they may be) There are many millions of handsets out there that are 2G capable. If some GSM channels were assigned to something called "community" use, or some such, then those phones could continue to be used. There are other parts of the spectrum that could be used for the new services. I don't buy this radio spectrum is a scarce resource argument.

Again. the idea is non-commercial! No direct interaction with other mobile operators.

You could of course call another mobile networks or in fact any other worldwide telephone number just the same as you do from say skype, or any voip provider. There is no need for commercial contracts with, or any interest from the likes of Telefónica. Receiving incoming calls from the outside world would probably require the rental of a multi-line DID from a commercial provider.

Range Networks sell a working BTS 'bubble' for $10,000. I am surprised if you work in the industry and are not aware of their work. If you build it yourself it could be quite a lot cheaper although your final installation costs can vary.

I won't make any assumption about operational costs, as it would depend on the level of community involvement. Assuming you wouldn't pay rent or anything ridiculous like that for the site, and that volunteers would maintain it, then cost would be just down to electricity and maybe internet connection. There are possibilities for using renewable energy sources, with the associated instalation costs.


No it's not just theory, I have the equipment and I have done it at low power. Others have done it on a larger scale. But I'm not really envisaging anything in Ireland. But as I'm from Ireland originally, I thought it would be interesting to see what people think here. However, I really don't expect to find major interest. I imagine the great majority of people in Ireland don't see the costs of their mobile as significant and they are more concerned about obtaining faster data services, more connectivity. etc. Solair points out that 2G is being phased out, and why wouldn't it be?
- But, If you stop thinking of it as a mobile phone network for a moment and understand that what you are actually talking about is two-way radio, (which is actually what mobile "phones" are), then you can understand that it is the first two-way radio system in history that doesn't require a license to operate the mobile station. The channel control and sharing technology makes this possible. You don't have to obey rules and etiquette with GSM. You don't have to listen for a clear channel before transmitting your callsign and then calling for the station you are looking for. The computer looks after all this for you. Therefore it's a wonderful way to put the benefits of 2-way radio into the hands of the community, for free. The GSM designers have been handsomely repaid for their work at this point, not to mention that they were of course, standing on the shoulders of all the packet radio development that came before them.

OK, i know i've jumped around and covered a few different issues with this post, but to summarise my response to you, I think you are looking at commercial viability of a project. I'm not.

whytek

http://openhere.data.ie/workshops/the-mobile-commons-open-source-gsm-network/

whytek

spoonface wrote: »

It wouldn't work out because it would require a major investment both in terms of buying the equipment, setting it up, running it ongoing and organising the whole thing e.g. billing etc. The only reason all this trouble is gone to is if a state does it or if the venture foresees making a profit out of it. Running a network is not a cheap thing, so it requires lots of paying customers to cover its costs.
So it's nice in theory but it wouldn't be a goer. If you want to communicate with lots of people for relatively cheap, go with CB's or the internet.

Well, finally, we did it, or at least placed the first stone.
And it wasn't the state that did it, nor was it done based on forseen profits.


http://www.bdlive.co.za/world/americas/2013/08/27/mexican-town-sets-up-its-own-much-cheaper-cellphone-service

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4g1Na3SecHY

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-23929009

zg3409

Very interesting development. I have used some short term test networks like these. Generally they are set up in areas with no phone signal for short term events, or set up as a temporary network for short term conferences or events.

They make perfect sense for areas with no coverage at all, and for areas that have a short term or disaster need. I do not know how well they would work in areas with coverage of other networks in terms of legal and political pressure.

From what I read existing phones are sent a message to join. Do these phones need a different SIM, as the networks I have used required, or can they use their old, or commercial operator provided SIM card. I know this is an issue, as then you need 2 phones or at least one phone unlocked and then switch SIMs?

spoonface

whytek wrote: »

Well, finally, we did it, or at least placed the first stone.
And it wasn't the state that did it, nor was it done based on forseen profits.


http://www.bdlive.co.za/world/americas/2013/08/27/mexican-town-sets-up-its-own-much-cheaper-cellphone-service

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4g1Na3SecHY

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-23929009

My point still stands, it's not economically viable, which is why a charity group had to pay for it since it won't pay for itself.

whytek

zg3409 wrote: »

From what I read existing phones are sent a message to join. Do these phones need a different SIM, as the networks I have used required, or can they use their old, or commercial operator provided SIM card. I know this is an issue, as then you need 2 phones or at least one phone unlocked and then switch SIMs?

Technically, they don't need a different SIM.
Practically, if there is no other network around for many kilometres, there is no (technical) problem using the operator supplied SIMs, or indeed, any other SIM that may be available.
Politically, it would be preferable to issue our own SIMs, and find a way to deal with the issue you mention.

At the events you mention, one couldn't use the commercial SIMs because of the presence of the commercial networks, the phone would constantly hop between it's home network and the event network.

whytek

spoonface wrote: »

a charity group had to pay for it.....

Where did you read that? I know there has been some level of misinformation with the recent media frenzy and some editors have been bordering on pulling 'facts' of the top of their head.

I would appreciate if you could send on any links you find that claim a charity group is involved.
This is not the case.