
Introducing OpenCellular: An open source wireless access platform - runesoerensen
https://code.facebook.com/posts/1754757044806180/introducing-opencellular-an-open-source-wireless-access-platform
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Johnythree
The obvious question is "what about licensing"?

The modules will need to pass EMC Compliance testing and be issued Compliance
Certificates (expensive!).

A suitable Cell frequency plan will need to be created, approved by the local
government, and then (expensive!) Radio Licenses issued.

Licensing as a Carrier and approval to connect with the local Telcom provider
will need to be arranged, along with the (expensive!) registration fees.

Then when you have it running you'll suddenly run into interference problems
from all the unlicensed boxes already installed by well meaning NGO's and
private organisations. Not to mention clashes with networks in neighboring
countries.

Bottom line: It's not as simple as just mounting radio box on a post and
switching it on.

Open Source phone towers are not a new concept. Has been already done in a
number of third world and island states. But without government licensing and
approval to back you up, a bunch of soldiers will arrive and simply rip out
your gear.

The above questions/comments are based on actual field experience in third
world countries...

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paavokoya
Honest question, what are the purposes of these licenses/fees other than to
take money from citizens? If a village in the middle of nowhere builds this
infrastructure to serve their own community what could go wrong without
licensing?

~~~
grandalf
The spectrum is a public good, and it is scarce. License fees benefit the
public.

Of course, content providers and infrastructure providers do not buy licenses
altruistically.

I think we're seeing Facebook being willing to invest in tech and potentially
license fees _because_ the ROI of having Facebook in a village can be
estimated and offering this hardware looks like a worthwhile investment.

While this sounds like a cynical perspective, it is not. Suppose a typical
company would analyze the ROI and conclude that if the payout doesn't happen
in 2 years it is not worth it.

Facebook may be considering a 10 year ROI and thus may be acting both
selfishly and also taking on infrastructure risk that has suffered from market
failure until 2016 since no providers of first world infrastructure have opted
to invest.

In a capitalist utopia, anything with positive ROI would receive investment,
and all risks could be accurately hedged, allowing all available capital to be
fully utilized.

~~~
GregBuchholz
>The spectrum is a public good, and it is scarce.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra-
wideband](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra-wideband)

~~~
__jal
I assume that you consider the link to refute the 'scarce' part.

It doesn't.

~~~
eatbitseveryday
It is often useful to support statements such as these.

~~~
Johnythree
A fellow by the name of Claude Shannon wrote a book about it.

Ultra-Wideband doesn't create new bandwidth. It just re-uses the existing
spectrum in a different way.

And by raising the general background noise it steals bandwidth from all the
other users, so everybody is worse off.

Or to put it another way "There ain't no such thing as a free lunch".

~~~
GregBuchholz
Scarcity by itself doesn't seem a significant enough aspect to warrant the FCC
regulation that we have though. Think of other scarce resources like platinum.
If ultra-wide band (or similar) technology was used back in the 1920's, I
don't think the push for regulation would have been as strong, since jamming /
interference wouldn't have been a driver. I think we've got a technical
solution to the original social problem, it is just that it arrived 100 years
later.

[https://www.shoretel.com/history-federal-communications-
comm...](https://www.shoretel.com/history-federal-communications-commission-
fcc)

~~~
__jal
Scarcity in physical objects is rather different than spectrum. For one,
market demand encourages things like recycling, more exploration, etc. for
platinum. Spectrum scarcity encourages more efficient use, but until we get
our promised physics-violation-devices, can't make/find more.

With spectrum, there's also a real-time use component. People who consume
platinum generally don't consume it in a way that in any way resembles
communication use. This is related to another key reason governments hold on
to the control of spectrum allocation: military interests.

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ysleepy
Wow, this seems cool.

Has there been any research into OpenBTS, Osmocom, OpenLTE ?

This is really an opportunity for Facebook to show that they are serious with
their efforts to bring Internet to developing regions.

Especially with the delayed adoption of Cellular tech generations on the
cellphone side, I think an open source Stack is the only way to go.

If the networks are built using decommissioned tech from somewhere else, it
will be brittle and won't be cost effective in the long run, especially
considering energy consumption.

The only missing part now is a baseband implementation with GSM/UMTS/(LTE)
support.

~~~
rsync
"This is really an opportunity for Facebook to show that they are serious with
their efforts to bring Internet to developing regions."

Facebook is not interested in bringing Internet to developing regions.

Facebook is interested in _bringing facebook_ to developing regions.

~~~
throwanem
Exactly. Just as Uber only hires human drivers as a means of bootstrapping to
self-driving Teslas, Facebook only expands Internet access as a means of
bootstrapping to more of itself.

~~~
Swannie
Except that Uber controls the relationship with the consumer.

For Facebook, using open source to increase internet density is really just a
PR stunt, as they won't own anything with the customer.

That said, their WhatsApp investment is more relevant in the third world.

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Johnythree
The more that I think about this, the crazier it seems:

The argument seems to be that the cost of phone base stations is holding back
development in 3rd world countries, but no evidence for this is offered.

Firstly, the world-wide mobile phone market is huge and fiercely competitive.
You can now buy a 2G Chinese base station surprisingly cheaply.

Secondly, there are thousands of tons of secondhand gear lying idle. An
example: Australia is about to rip out all of its 2G network. This will mean
umpteen thousands of GSM/GPRS base stations being dumped for scrap.

Thirdly, the cost of the radio gear is a small part of the total cost of a
base station. The cost of the Shed, Power Supply, Solar Panels and Batteries,
Mast and footings, Coax, Diplexers, Antennas, etc, will be far more. Just the
expense of running power to the top of the hill will likely exceed that of the
electronics.

But the big cost will be extending a dozen or so outside lines to the national
telephone network. Just setting up the billing arrangements, etc, will be a
huge job.

The bit that really worries me would be staffing. I can imaging a bunch of
enthusiastic western hobbyists turning up to install the gear, then departing
leaving no-one to maintain it. I'm betting that after a week or three the
whole system will be down.

But lastly is the assumption that the locals can't do all this. In any remote
community there will be skilled local entrepreneurs who are selling and
repairing electronic equipment. It is these people who need to be the ones who
install a phone system. If they haven't yet, it will not be because of lack of
cheap gear, but because of the non-existence of basic infrastructure, eg a
national phone network to connect to.

And you can be sure that if there is no local phone tower, there will already
be a VHF mobile radio network used by police and businessmen (eg the "red
radio" VHF CBs in remote Thailand).

~~~
Swannie
I agree. Crazy.

To quote:

"In many cellular network deployments, the cost of the civil and supporting
infrastructure (land, tower, security, power, and backhaul) is often much
greater than the cost of the cellular access point itself."

Indeed, this is not an order of magnitude question - several orders of
magnitude.

"One of our goals was to make architectural and design improvements that would
result in lower costs associated with the civil and supporting
infrastructure."

Hmm, really? Facebook don't think that the established players in the market
are not aggressively pursuing the same design improvements?

Will this spur them on? Marginally, yes.

This is not a hard market to get into, with commodity off the shelf chips for
cells being available (e.g. from Intel via MindSpeed via PicoChip).

It's good to see Facebook investing in fundamental R&D. I just can't shake the
feeling they are struggling to find areas to make strategic plays if this is
the best that they can do.

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praveenster
There seems to be a lot of negativity in this thread. So, I'll attempt to
provide a positive spin.

I think of this (and other open source hardware and software projects) similar
to how I think of mathematic theorems or tools at Home Depot. These are good
building blocks to learn, prototype and build. If you want to take it
commercial, then you have to bear licensing costs etc. but it is a great way
for hobbyists to build things on top of these blocks rather than start from
scratch.

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5ilv3r
No code == no sale.

I don't like the eventual promise of opensourceness. Just make it FOSS out the
gate.

~~~
cptskippy
Well the trouble with open-sourcing incomplete or very immature solutions out
of the gate is that they'll get forked because people will see a need to fix
what they see as fundamental flaws with an as yet unvetted or incomplete
design. You'll also have people implement in production solutions based on the
half-baked designs that may not be forward compatible with the ultimate 1.0
release. In either scenario you've fractured your community and diluted your
effort.

By announcing a solution before it's released you can attract the attention of
SMEs who might evaluate the solution and provide valuable insights and offer
you the opportunity to resolve concerns before users start adopting your
solution.

~~~
5ilv3r
That's more of an open source problem than a free software problem. I
recognize the concern as valid in business, but ideally it would not be
relevant.

~~~
cptskippy
I'm not sure I understand how that distinction changes anything. You outright
dismissed the project and any of it's potential merits on the grounds that it
only promised to be FOSS eventually instead of initially.

Ideals are great to have but you can't dismiss something of merit simply
because it's less than ideal. Ideally all medicine would be free and open
source but the fact that they're not doesn't mean we should be turning our
backs on them.

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throw42
This is just amazing stuff. With this, Facebook is going to revolutionize
telecom in developing countries. Villagers will be able to get together and
run 'bandit' networks and provide coverage to all. Laws dont apply much to
startups like facebook and Airbnb, and liability is definitely not on FB.

Amazing. Just Amazing work from Facebook.

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jarmitage
Did anyone use the BRCK from Ushahidi? I think it had some similar goals and
features. It would be interesting to compare these and see how Facebook have
advanced the state-of-the-art.

[http://www.brck.com/](http://www.brck.com/)

~~~
mdani
These are two different things.

BRCK == A rugged WiFi hotspot that uses cellular data as a back haul to
provide WiFi connectivity up to 20 devices

Facebook TIP == A base station that provides LTE connectivity to handsets.

So with Facebook device, you'll be able to set up your own LTE network and be
a mobile operator whereas BRCK has no such capability.

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kirkdouglas
Will they open hardware for this platform? If no, then it does not look very
useful, just PR.

~~~
ianlevesque
They sure will! "Facebook plans to open-source the hardware design, along with
necessary firmware and control software"

Seems to be right in line with the open compute project.

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bikamonki
Open and Facebook is an oxymoron

~~~
CaptSpify
I hate facebook as much as anyone, but they do put out a lot of open software.

~~~
bikamonki
Ok, let me switch off sarcasm and put it differently:

Facebook is to OpenCellular what Google is to Android: they do not really care
for the _disconnected_ , they just want a bigger market and are willing to
invest in infra rather than waiting for telcos to do it.

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devy
Whose frequency spectrum does OpenCellular use? I took a quick peak at Telecom
Infra Project (TIP) members page, looks like T-Mobile is participating. So can
we assume OpenCellular access points RF uses T-Mobile's spectrum?

~~~
subway
I imagine that will be up to the individual operators. This is a hardware
platform.

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html5web
Top players:
[https://telecominfraproject.com/members/](https://telecominfraproject.com/members/)

~~~
mdani
I am an individual member of TIP. You can join for free if interested. The
project groups are forming right now so good time to get in.

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RachelF
Interesting project. No mention of what can be used as the backhaul, though.

How do these boxes connect to the rest of the Internet or public phone
network?

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throwanem
One step closer to Facebook's second billion.

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html5web
One more step towards free internet!

~~~
naringas
in which the principal freedom is the freedom to track your every action!

~~~
jdblair
we will track your reaction to tracking, citizen!

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edent
Wonder how they manage SIM distribution / authentication?

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sudoroomAcorn
Facebook + politics = ultraViolence/Fascism

