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I read about OpenBTS it's really amazing... but I was wondering if we can use it to build phone-to-phone provider-less network.

Any clues or experiments are really appreciated.

Vadim Kotov
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Bassel Alkhateeb
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3 Answers3

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One thing to be aware of is that open BTS is 2G/GSM only - i.e. it does not support 3G/UMTS.

This may or may not be important to you depending on what you would like to achieve.

There does appear to be some discussion on adding this functionality in the future (i.e. building an open node b/RNC effectively) but it will be tricky as the authentication mechanism used in 3G requires the network owning the SIM to provide authentication data for even the most basic communication.

Mick
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GSM follows a strict client-server model. Mobile phones are intended to be clients.

If you would want to build phones with phone-to-phone capability you would need to implement network functionality in the phone. With this, phone-to-phone (theoretically) could be done in an ad-hoc-network model, with one phone running the network part.

I would suspect that one has to look at impacts on the pyhsical/radio layer as well.

Rather unrealistic, IMHO.

Bernd
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  • Actually it is realistic, Terra net has implemented it already http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6987784.stm – Bassel Alkhateeb Jul 27 '11 at 13:32
  • From www.terranet.se: "TerraNet designs a proprietary ad-hoc mesh network". From the BBC link: "TerraNet phones currently only work with a special handset". This sounds like custom non-GSM technology. The question is about using GSM for peer-to-peer. – Bernd Jul 28 '11 at 11:33
  • It's using the same GSM hardware inside the phone http://itc.conversationsnetwork.org/shows/detail3640.html – Bassel Alkhateeb Jul 30 '11 at 06:54
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May be of interest:

http://terranet.se/history/

So far this company (TerraNet) seem to be only offering sowftware for creating mesh networks over Wifi (I think Wifi is a big disadvantage due to the battery drain. If only we could use GSM), but they seem to share this idea.

Rolf
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