Antarctica-South Pole using a mobile phone-IT news Antarctica can also use a mobile phone

Antarctica may be the last piece there is no cell phone coverage continent in the world, but in Australia under the efforts of the Government and the RangeNetworks company, you will soon be able to research facilities in Antarctica near the cell phone signal is received.

RangeNetworks has introduced the world's most widely used GSM service close to the Antarctic Circle on Macquarie Island. Compare with walkie-talkies and WiFi networks, communication networks more popular, due to its broader, less power consumption. Although local has with the rest of the world via satellite telephone communications, but this model is mainly used in the fields of security and research, local telecommunications services do not employ this technique.

Range Networks CEO aide·kaozeer (EdKozel) that the GSM networks such as Macquarie Island usually need to spend $ 1 million in construction costs. However, if you use open source platform called OpenBTS, the company only takes thousands of dollars to deploy this technology in Antarctica. Using OpenBTS operates a GSM network only requires a radio software, as well as an off-the-shelf Linux server. "Traditional infrastructure is reason for the high cost of most carriers, but we can not be subjected to any restriction of historical baggage. "Kaozeer explains.

Thanks to this system (Barebone) mode, this technology can be deployed in various remote areas cellular network services, from Antarctica to Indonesia's rural areas. Due to unprofitable, so the large telecommunications companies is unlikely construction of traditional network in these areas. But the economic benefits of the open source model is to bring the corner.

From Indonesia to Iceland

OpenBTS is co-founder of RangeNetworks Dawei·bojisi (DavidBurgess) 2008 joint development with other people, when he realized that software can be used to replace many traditional infrastructures in the cellular network. "The first time I encountered a mobile network in Defense Contracting field. "Burgess says. He later left the Rangenetworks and founded a new company named Legba. "I immediately fell in love with the technology, but extremely inefficient deployment of GSM. Was the 80 's, computer prices are expensive, power consumption is also very large, so that's doing is acceptable, but it makes no sense now. ”

OpenBTS is commonly used in sparsely populated rural areas, but will also be used by others in unexpected areas. For example, Iceland of a search-and-rescue team was using this software will helicopter into a flying mobile phone base stations, thereby using triangulation techniques to determine the location of missing persons.

Indeed, this software can be used by hackers, and hijack the user's cell phone information. Kaozeer: "this is not the company's intention, but because the software is open source, so this can indeed happen. "However, the benefits of wireless technology is far better than its risk, so this compromise is still very worthwhile.

Next steps

Although RangeNetworks will build new network in remote, but Burgess has turned his attention to another problem. He said many network operators are planning to convert the LTE standard has been widely, and disable the GSM network, in order to save money, and make more wireless spectrum for LTE networks. But he explained that many companies have no spare LTE infrastructure replacement GSM networks in rural areas, these users do not have Internet access.

Last year, after leaving RangeNetworks, Burgess now concentrate on developing new open source platform called YateBTS. This platform OpenBTS code with another open source project called Yate combined together. Burgess said that Yate is by Romania's NullTeam company has developed, can act as translators between different telecommunication protocols. This allows YateBTS to integrate with other Web standards together.

Burgess started Legba's purpose is to promote commercial YateBTS, he hopes the company can provide a way for network operators, GSM network to LTE networks share the same infrastructure, even sharing of spectrum. But Burgess's ambitions are not limited to, he also wants to spawn a revolution in infrastructure, just like Android brings to the mobile computing revolution. "The Android phone market a number of new companies and technologies, as well as new products, and led to new competition in the Smartphone market. "He said," Android on the mobile phone market by doing things that we the objectives to be reached in cyberspace. ”