10 ms·

The obvious question is "what about licensing"? The modules will need to pass EMC Compliance testing and be issued Compliance Certificates (expensive!). A sui

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...

petra 10y ago
You're right, but if this box is cheap enough, and we're talking about deploying 1 per village with natural spacial reuse, it's possible to see a political campaign allowing villages to install their own basestation on some empty bands. Also maybe it could work in a city, where neighborhoods join together to request a license from the city and the city will work with neighborhoods choosing suitable locations as to not interfere too much with each other. But of course it requires a political campaign and this might be a trigger to start that, with facebook also helping.
- Johnythree 10y ago
  The lesson learned over and over in the West, is that any add-hock development of the spectrum results in huge future inefficiencies with large blocks of spectrum locked out of re-use due to poor planning in the early days. The temptation is to let companies use new frequencies wherever they want, but in the longer term this results in chaos, and the only solution is to rip it all up and start again (at huge cost and disruption to service). The only workable approach is to design an interlocking network of spacial and frequency allocations and then stick with it, and make sure that each block is fully utilised before moving on to a new block. With all of the above considerations, the cost of the actual network hardware is negligible, especially if the consequence is that poor villages will have to abandon their total investment in equipment at some arbitrary point in the future.
  - gbhn 10y ago
    plug: check out the 3.5GHz band in the United States. (CBRS)
  - petra 10y ago
    That's true. But on the other hand, there are new techniques to let the network manage the the spectrum allocation dynamically, on it's own like "dynamic spectrum sharing"[1]. And it would be probably much easier to try such technologies on an Indian village(low spectral use, low buildings offering little interference, relatively cheaper labor). [1]https://www.seas.gwu.edu/~cheng/Publications/2012/DSA-WC-2012.pdf https://www.seas.gwu.edu/~cheng/Publications/2012/DSA-WC-201...
paavokoya 10y ago
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?
- vvanders 10y ago
  My naive understanding is it's to pay for enforcement of interference. Not sure how far LTE bands go but UHF/VHF will propagate ~80mi radius if placed on a high enough vantage point.
- grandalf 10y ago
  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.
  - paavokoya 10y ago
    >In a capitalist utopia, anything with positive ROI would receive investment Yes. Including arbitrary licenses enforced by local governments to raise the barrier to entry and restrict interconnected innovation through forcing all players to route through a central (likely selfish) entity. This does not benefit the public.
    - grandalf 10y ago
flangloria 10y ago
>But without government licensing and approval to back you up, a bunch of soldiers will arrive and simply rip out your gear. This is the single most important obstacle here. Moreover, the bureaucratic procedures one has to jump through, to get such a thing approved, are extremely opaque. In a country like India, where the government talks about stuff like "power to the people" all the time, when someone tries to implement such a network on the ground because it's really needed and helps fulfill the ruling party's election promises, they would be stopped by local authorities who would cite some vague law or seek some hefty bribe. Either way, I appreciate that a company like facebook would spend so much time and money to do a nice thing like this.

petra 10y ago

You're right, but if this box is cheap enough, and we're talking about deploying 1 per village with natural spacial reuse, it's possible to see a political campaign allowing villages to install their own basestation on some empty bands. Also maybe it could work in a city, where neighborhoods join together to request a license from the city and the city will work with neighborhoods choosing suitable locations as to not interfere too much with each other. But of course it requires a political campaign and this might be a trigger to start that, with facebook also helping.

Johnythree 10y ago
The lesson learned over and over in the West, is that any add-hock development of the spectrum results in huge future inefficiencies with large blocks of spectrum locked out of re-use due to poor planning in the early days. The temptation is to let companies use new frequencies wherever they want, but in the longer term this results in chaos, and the only solution is to rip it all up and start again (at huge cost and disruption to service). The only workable approach is to design an interlocking network of spacial and frequency allocations and then stick with it, and make sure that each block is fully utilised before moving on to a new block. With all of the above considerations, the cost of the actual network hardware is negligible, especially if the consequence is that poor villages will have to abandon their total investment in equipment at some arbitrary point in the future.
- gbhn 10y ago
  plug: check out the 3.5GHz band in the United States. (CBRS)
- petra 10y ago
  That's true. But on the other hand, there are new techniques to let the network manage the the spectrum allocation dynamically, on it's own like "dynamic spectrum sharing"[1]. And it would be probably much easier to try such technologies on an Indian village(low spectral use, low buildings offering little interference, relatively cheaper labor). [1]https://www.seas.gwu.edu/~cheng/Publications/2012/DSA-WC-2012.pdf https://www.seas.gwu.edu/~cheng/Publications/2012/DSA-WC-201...

paavokoya 10y ago

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?

vvanders 10y ago
My naive understanding is it's to pay for enforcement of interference. Not sure how far LTE bands go but UHF/VHF will propagate ~80mi radius if placed on a high enough vantage point.
grandalf 10y ago
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.
- paavokoya 10y ago
  >In a capitalist utopia, anything with positive ROI would receive investment Yes. Including arbitrary licenses enforced by local governments to raise the barrier to entry and restrict interconnected innovation through forcing all players to route through a central (likely selfish) entity. This does not benefit the public.
  - grandalf 10y ago

flangloria 10y ago

>But without government licensing and approval to back you up, a bunch of soldiers will arrive and simply rip out your gear. This is the single most important obstacle here. Moreover, the bureaucratic procedures one has to jump through, to get such a thing approved, are extremely opaque. In a country like India, where the government talks about stuff like "power to the people" all the time, when someone tries to implement such a network on the ground because it's really needed and helps fulfill the ruling party's election promises, they would be stopped by local authorities who would cite some vague law or seek some hefty bribe. Either way, I appreciate that a company like facebook would spend so much time and money to do a nice thing like this.