
Ignored by big companies, Mexican village creates its own mobile service - Suraj-Sun
http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2013-08-27/rest-of-world/41496213_1_village-america-movil-afp
======
Aldipower
Slightly off topic.

In germany there's a movement called Freifunk. The ambition is to build a
community driven open Wifi-Mesh-Network by flashing low-cost routers with the
Freifunk firmware. So these routers can auto discover their neighbours and
then connects via the routing protocol called batman-adv to a mesh. If there's
no neighbour router, batman-adv gets tunneled over the internet to connect to
the Freifunk network. It's an IPv6 network with gateways to the IPv4 internet.

The problem in Germany is, that on the country-side, there are a lot of dark
holes by providing broadband internet. Some villages has to connect with
64kbit/s. We have the year 2013.. What the people in these villages do is,
they hire one big fibre and share it over the community driven Freifunk mesh
network to gain broadband access to all the people in the village.

~~~
rsiqueira
In Brazil, it is illegal to share Internet connection with neighbours, the
fine is about US$ 4000. Article from Brazilian newspaper "Share internet with
neighbors can generate fine of up to R$ 8000": [http://bit.do/illegal-to-
share-internet-connection](http://bit.do/illegal-to-share-internet-connection)

"According to the National Telecommunications Agency (Anatel), wireless
networks can not exceed the perimeter of the residence of the subscriber and
the signal can not be sold, regardless of whether or not to generate profit."

~~~
lostlogin
My father was threatened by Telecom here in New Zealand for this. They
wouldn't provide broadband to him due to him being too far from the exchange
and he made a passing comment about using his neighbours. They were rather
nasty. He lives rurally and his neighbour's house comes off a street that is
considerably closer to the exchange. It's a rather odd mentality to refuse to
provide something and refuse to allow a workaround that will still generate
some revenue.

------
devx
I think he's the same guy who tried to raise money on IndieGoGo for it. He
didn't achieve the goal, but he did it anyway:

[http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/community-cell-
phone/](http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/community-cell-phone/)

~~~
revelation
Well, thats a much better source than the original indiatimes.

So it is an actual GSM network, and it runs OpenBTS. Awesome.

~~~
devx
It seems OpenBTS only works for 2G. Hopefully Bellard will open source his LTE
base station software in a few years, to accelerate the rise of such networks
all over the world:

[http://bellard.org/lte/](http://bellard.org/lte/)

~~~
moreentropy
Add [http://openvolte.org/](http://openvolte.org/) and you have a voice
network as well.

~~~
Zigurd
That is way cool. The idea that the baseband processor should handle voice
audio paths and mobile network signaling is a very "bellhead" idea. With all-
IP networks, doing voice payload and signaling in the user space of the main
CPU is fine, and could result in more telephony apps based on being able to
access voice and signalling more readily. Like, for example, secure calls.

------
dcaranda
Note: America Movil, Carlos Slim's mobile network, controls 80% of the Mexican
market. In that context, this is just a really awesome story of empowerment.

------
selectodude
Maybe it's 1/13th the cost of the network in Mexico City because it provides
less than 1/13th the usage.

>There is one catch: phone calls must be limited to a maximum of five minutes
to avoid a saturation of lines.

------
stan_rogers
Marykirk (Aberdeenshire, Scotland) is doing the same thing after giving up on
BT, etc.

~~~
lucaspiller
Interesting. Link?

My parents live in a tiny village in South West England where there is no
mobile or terrestrial TV.

~~~
stan_rogers
Certainly. You can find more at
[http://www.marykirk.com/](http://www.marykirk.com/)

I became aware of the project because it's being driven (at least in part) by
a former colleague in the IBM (Lotus) Notes and Domino development community,
"Wild" Bill Buchan. You can find him at
[http://www.billbuchan.com/](http://www.billbuchan.com/)

~~~
andyking
This is fixed wireless internet access, rather than a local GSM network. It's
very unlikely that Ofcom would licence a small local mobile network.

~~~
stan_rogers
That's the starting point, and one has to start somewhere. (I think the main
hope is to shame someone into providing service, but they'll build what they
can't get.)

------
meskio
The web page of the project:
[http://rhizomatica.org/](http://rhizomatica.org/)

------
Aldo_MX
I have family in a similar village, these are exciting news, because we have
been ignored by operators during years.

------
gpvos
The article seems a bit confused. They are in Mexico, but got licensed by the
FCC?!

------
sasas
Fair enough to assume this will only be a local network? You need to be a
registered Operator in order to have roaming agreements for connectivity to
other networks.

Additionally if they are using SIM cards issued by another operator that
attaches to this network it will have to remain local as the global title
routing would route back to the home network's HLR that the subscriber belongs
to during the location update procedure.

~~~
precisioncoder
From the article: "The equipment used in Talea, which was provided by
California-based Range Networks, includes a 900mhz radio network and computer
software that routes calls, registers numbers and handles billing. Calls to
the United States are channeled via a voice over Internet protocol ( VoIP)
provider."

------
bickfordb
This is an exciting model. I believe network connectivity should be treated
like a local utility that is priced based on cost, not as a premium service

~~~
icebraining
I'd rather have the lowest price. Cost-based pricing doesn't necessarily
achieve that on the medium to long term, because it leaves no margin for cost-
cutting innovation.

In any case, the problem here wasn't the price, but the cost itself; even if
they were doing it at-cost, no telco would just send a guy with an antenna, a
2W amplifier and a computer, that can only support a few dozen calls
simultaneously. They just work at a much bigger scale.

------
Sagat
Where's Carlos Slim when you need him?

~~~
galaktor
The article says it's Carlos Slim's company that was ignoring the village
because the population was too small:

"After being ignored by a company owned by the world's richest man Carlos
Slim, a tiny Mexican village has developed its own mobile network with
international connections."

"The village of Villa Talea de Castro, dotted with small pink and yellow
homes, has a population of 2,500 indigenous people. Tucked away in a lush
forest in the southern state of Oaxaca, it was not seen as a profitable market
for companies such as Slim's America Movil. The company wanted at least 10,000
subscribers to bring the village into its mobile coverage, AFP said."

~~~
gwern
And now we know why Slim is one of the richest men in the world.

