This isn't quite about Amateur Radio, but it's about wireless technology in a related area. In addition, this discussion is part of a larger article that I've been working on about the need for "Neighborhood Area Networks". Thus it's fodder for inclusion here on SuperPacket.
The genesis of this article is that I'm involved with a private discussion about the potentials of Open Source Wireless Telephony (my loose description). Basically the idea that a small wireless telephony network could be created using open source technologies and some alternative spectrum so that an independent wireless telephony network could be created in a place that wouldn't otherwise have wireless telephony service. Our pocket computers have become such a fixture of life that being in a place where we don't have access to the Internet or being able to make a telephone call seems nearly unthinkable now. But that situation is reality, even in "first world" North America. So there is a need to think about this.
My sense is that the private discussion I'm participating in isn't going to go anywhere, at least in the direction I consider productive, and I don't want the research I've done for that discussion to just age out into obscurity, so I'm capturing my thoughts here.
It's Complicated
In the larger, picture, telephony is such a complicated ecosystem, I'm personally skeptical about DIY and Open Source Cellular Telephony. The entire ecosystem seems too thoroughly locked down to really make an impact. GSM seems to have been effectively recreated in open source implementations including in GNU Radio, but GSM isn't being used that much any more and support for it is being dropped (all the commercial networks are migrating to 4G and 5G).
While it's possible to build a DIY Open Source mobile telephony network, it's daunting to keep it running and fix it when it breaks and expand it to all the places it should be. Most people would rather use a network than run one.
That said, here are some of the most promising projects that, if one was interested in making a real difference, could "energize" with contributions, especially financial:
Community LTE Project - https://blog.colte.network/ These folks at the University of Washington did create a largely DIY Open Source mobile telephony network. I don't see any current progress on this, but in my reading the usual source of such "stalling" on a promising project is the original funding runs out and the team disbands as the individuals seek other projects that are funded. This project did all the work to prove out the concept and it seems to me, with some funding, it could be replicated nearly anywhere it's needed.
Pinephone - https://www.pine64.org/pinephone/ Unlike some previous efforts to create an open source mobile phone, this one seems to have some legs. There's amazing energy in the Pine 64 organization.
Village Telco - https://villagetelco.org - This was a project that ended up creating a new type of telephone network. It incorporated Wi-Fi, Mesh Networking, telephony routing (including the ability to connect to a gateway to the worldwide telephone network) and simple, cheap, Plain Old Telephone Service (POTS) telephones. The idea was that the radio was put up on a pole, and a simple cable ran down the pole for power (could also be powered by a solar panel / battery) and a telephone. You could dial any other phone in the village. The network could be constructed by local folks - there was some installation with IP configuration, which could actually be done by Interactive Voice Response on the phone. All the telephone work was done with embedded Asterisk. This project just seemed to coast down and is no longer active. In my research about Village Telco, I was told that because the grant ran out and no one financially "guaranteed" the continued production of the unique Village Telco hardware, or was able to pay the developers, the project has effectively gone into "stasis" - no one has officially declared Village Telco dead, but there are no signs of life.
Wildernets - https://villagetelco.org/get-started/wildernets/ - Wildernets is a follow-on project by one of the developers of Village Telco that considerably modernized the Village Telco paradigm including making it possible to use a mobile device on a Village Telco network by the simple expedient of having a VOIP SIP client app and using the Wi-Fi capability of the phone instead of carrier connectivity. Given that Village Telco could easily provide coverage for a village, this seemed a great idea. Wildernets also created the ability to do Instant Messaging on a Village Telco network. This project stalled because, again, the hardware to host it went out of production and there was no source of funding for continuing the work for new hardware. If there was funding, then perhaps Village Telco hardware and Wildernets firmware could be recreated and be made available to the world again.
Unlicensed Long Term Evolution (Unlicensed LTE) / MulteFire - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LTE_in_unlicensed_spectrum ULTE / MulteFire is the idea of operating wireless telephony networks in the various license-exempt 5 GHz bands much like is done in licensed spectrum. The difference is that the 5 GHz bands aren't "owned" by any one carrier so interference is not just possible, but likely, and there are technical limitations that must be observed when operating in the various 5 GHz license-exempt bands. Theoretically, if ULTE were a reality, an entity could construct their own private LTE network using only 5 GHz spectrum. I have no information about whether ULTE / MulteFire was ever completely incorporated into the LTE standard, and of course, the migration into "5G" is now well underway and any extensions to 4G / LTE technologies might well be moot.
Also, the Wi-Fi Alliance cried foul over ULTE / MulteFire and caused a bit of a stir.
Wi-Fi is the open source equivalent of spectrum
A general observation about wireless technologies - for all the hue and cry about the deficiencies of Wi-Fi... it works. If you want it to go long distances that's tough, but doable. What's needed in the real world is hackable devices and those are getting scarcer and scarcer. If one wants to see open source wireless technologies be made more pervasive, perhaps consider contributing to one of the open source Wi-Fi firmware efforts (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_router_firmware_projects) especially OpenWRT.
Thanks for reading!
Steve Stroh N8GNJ
Bellingham, Washington, USA
2021-05-04
Copyright © 2021 by Steven K. Stroh