A full‐power base station with software costs around
$10,000. Compare that to the typical $50,000 - $100,000
investment for base station controllers, mobile
switching centers and "a whole lot of plumbing" to
bring in power, backhaul, etc., in a traditional
cellular network.
So it's a base station that's a fifth as expensive as a regular base station.
And since there's no BoM, we don't know if that ten thousand dollar number includes solar panels to power the thing, or wireless backhaul to network the base stations together.
Don't forget that it runs on licensed frequencies, so you have to pay your local radio licensing agency to use it. It's not like a wifi router, which you can just buy and turn it on out of the box. It doesn't matter if it's open source if you can't use it without breaking the law.
Really, the only amazing thing here is how they got Network World to run such a blatant puff piece about such a fundamentally unexciting product.
If the price came down a lot, you could do this with a home base station. Still illegal, but I think unlikely to be noticed. I am not a cellular engineer.
Likewise, anything out in the middle of nowhere like burning man could probably do this covertly.
Governments in other nations might view this in an entirely different way: cheap infrastructure.
Plus, this is a great example when arguing for opening up these frequencies a bit here.
Wasn't there an article posted here last week about hackers using this same software stack to spoof towers and intercept calls with about $1500 in gear?
Are you referring to Chris Paget's demo at DEFCON at the end of July?
OpenBTS can in fact be used for nefarious purposes (or to demonstrate the intrinsic insecurity of the GSM standard). It could also in principle be used by law enforcement agencies to track criminals.
if you want wireless phones in your home that talk SIP, they're available in the form of DECT phones with SIP-capable basestations, or WiFi phones. you could get quite a few of either of them before your cost reaches the cost of this thing.
also you won't have to figure in the cost of a massive FCC fine.
The bare hardware cost is less than $5K, but perhaps the $10K price quoted in the article includes the tower, rigging, cables, power source, enclosure, Wi-Fi backhaul, etc., not to mention a nice profit margin.
Incidentally, there are some gnarly GSM patent licensing issues that are discussed in the January 2009 entries on the OpenBTS blog.
Now, let network all the hackerspace together, and then network all the members of the hackerspace together and so on. Than you have a pretty awesome cellular network, maybe with free internet built in.
Of course, it would probably cost 30 bucks up-front to set one up for your house.
The key paragraph:
So it's a base station that's a fifth as expensive as a regular base station.And since there's no BoM, we don't know if that ten thousand dollar number includes solar panels to power the thing, or wireless backhaul to network the base stations together.
Don't forget that it runs on licensed frequencies, so you have to pay your local radio licensing agency to use it. It's not like a wifi router, which you can just buy and turn it on out of the box. It doesn't matter if it's open source if you can't use it without breaking the law.
Really, the only amazing thing here is how they got Network World to run such a blatant puff piece about such a fundamentally unexciting product.