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Viability of open GSM stacks and equipmentViability of open GSM stacks and equipmentPosted Sep 27, 2010 12:39 UTC (Mon) by sladen (subscriber, #27402)In reply to: GSM security testing: where the action is by Cyberax Parent article: GSM security testing: where the action is
Yes, going forward, the number of modems/radio interfaces available for backhaul on a device is seemingly always increasing (GSM/GPRS/EDGE, Bluetooth, W-CDMA/HSDPA, 802.11b/g, LTE...), but on a phone the GSM Um is going to be present for a very long time virtually anywhere in the world (except in Japan). Instead of thinking about the costs of initial hardware certification, consider instead every business case that you may have encountered (in designing networks) where a mast had been planned but wasn't economically viable based on the threshold of subscribers in that area. Imagine re-evaluating those business cases with potentially 1/10th of the equipment running costs (power, cooling) and 1/10th of the capital equipment costs. For a small telco such as Telecom Niue (or perhaps yourself) the turning-over-the-tables of current build-out viability is probably quite attractive, and potentially as disruptive as COTS/open-source has been in the rest of the electronics industry. There are people open to the possibility out there Â…name a recent smartphone on the market that isn't now running a BSD/GPL Unixy kernel inside it and then project that same degree of confluence onto the infrastructure side.
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Viability of open GSM stacks and equipment Posted Sep 27, 2010 13:10 UTC (Mon) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]
>Yes, going forward, the number of modems/radio interfaces available for backhaul on a device is seemingly always increasing (GSM/GPRS/EDGE, Bluetooth, W-CDMA/HSDPA, 802.11b/g, LTE...), but on a phone the GSM Um is going to be present for a very long time virtually anywhere in the world (except in Japan).
Not likely. AMPS/DAMPS died quickly with the advent of GSM/CDMA, for example (oh, sure there were few holdouts). Once we have viable 4G standards, they're going to spread quickly. There are just too many advantages: cheaper roaming, better data integration, more bandwidth, less power consumption, etc.
>Instead of thinking about the costs of initial hardware certification, consider instead every business case that you may have encountered (in designing networks) where a mast had been planned but wasn't economically viable based on the threshold of subscribers in that area.
Almost never happens. Even at $1 ARPU per month it's economically viable to install a tower even with 50 subscribers. You don't really get lower than that. And if you DO get lower, than most of your investment will be spent on getting uplink anyway (usually a microwave link, which requires, you guessed it, a tower for line-of-sight).
Viability of open GSM stacks and equipment Posted Sep 30, 2010 7:13 UTC (Thu) by Cato (subscriber, #7643) [Link]
I doubt GSM is going to go away on the handset for at least 10 years, simply because there is so much GSM deployed world-wide and it will be convenient to be able to make voice calls even when visiting the most rural parts of the developing world. Given software radio and DSP technologies, there is very little extra cost to supporting GSM alongside UMTS and LTE.
GSM also has good coverage for rural areas, as a GSM cell can reach up to 35 km (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GSM#Cellular_radio_network ) vs. "over 10km" in theory for UMTS (http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=7m-MnwW_o7AC&lpg=P... ). Even today in a Western European country, the only way I can get UMTS 3G coverage at home is via femtocell, and I'm only 5 km from the nearest 3G base station. The economics of deploying a UMTS or LTE base station closer to me will only stack up if there's a very cheap wireless backhaul technology that can handle the required throughput for multiple 3G/4G subscribers.
Viability of open GSM stacks and equipment Posted Sep 30, 2010 12:54 UTC (Thu) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]
Range of coverage can actually be better in 4G technologies. First, they are going to use more robust and efficient radio modulation technologies. I know that it's being specifically worked on.
For GSM maximum distance is limited to about 40km (by lightspeed so you can't do anything about it). It's quite feasible that 4G technologies will allow 50-70km maximum distance to tower.
UMTS is quite far from ideal here. We've learned a lot since it was first designed.
Viability of open GSM stacks and equipment Posted Sep 30, 2010 19:42 UTC (Thu) by Jan_Zerebecki (guest, #70319) [Link]
> For GSM maximum distance is limited to about 40km (by lightspeed so you can't do anything about it).
Usually the range is limited to the distance the signal can travel in one timeslot, but it seems you can do something about it if your BTS is modified to allow the signal to arrive in the next timeslot.
Viability of open GSM stacks and equipment Posted Sep 30, 2010 19:50 UTC (Thu) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]
Yes, it's sometimes used. But not all devices will work in this case, and GSM you can get issues with interference.
Viability of open GSM stacks and equipment Posted Oct 4, 2010 2:24 UTC (Mon) by showell (subscriber, #2929) [Link]
We have had our GSM cells working out to 121 kms using an Ericsson feature called extended range.
GSM will be with us for along time because the GSM chipsets are still 1/2 the price of the 3G / 4G ones (due mainly to IP payments). GSM handsets sell in poorer markets in massive quantities over 3G.
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