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The more that I think about this, the crazier it seems: The argument seems to be that the cost of phone base stations is holding back development in 3rd world

The more that I think about this, the crazier it seems: The argument seems to be that the cost of phone base stations is holding back development in 3rd world countries, but no evidence for this is offered. Firstly, the world-wide mobile phone market is huge and fiercely competitive. You can now buy a 2G Chinese base station surprisingly cheaply. Secondly, there are thousands of tons of secondhand gear lying idle. An example: Australia is about to rip out all of its 2G network. This will mean umpteen thousands of GSM/GPRS base stations being dumped for scrap. Thirdly, the cost of the radio gear is a small part of the total cost of a base station. The cost of the Shed, Power Supply, Solar Panels and Batteries, Mast and footings, Coax, Diplexers, Antennas, etc, will be far more. Just the expense of running power to the top of the hill will likely exceed that of the electronics. But the big cost will be extending a dozen or so outside lines to the national telephone network. Just setting up the billing arrangements, etc, will be a huge job. The bit that really worries me would be staffing. I can imaging a bunch of enthusiastic western hobbyists turning up to install the gear, then departing leaving no-one to maintain it. I'm betting that after a week or three the whole system will be down. But lastly is the assumption that the locals can't do all this. In any remote community there will be skilled local entrepreneurs who are selling and repairing electronic equipment. It is these people who need to be the ones who install a phone system. If they haven't yet, it will not be because of lack of cheap gear, but because of the non-existence of basic infrastructure, eg a national phone network to connect to. And you can be sure that if there is no local phone tower, there will already be a VHF mobile radio network used by police and businessmen (eg the "red radio" VHF CBs in remote Thailand).

grandalf 10y ago
> The argument seems to be that the cost of phone base stations is holding back development in 3rd world countries I'd say not quite: Since most of the first world dollars go into cutting edge technology, there is low-hanging fruit in the now-miniaturized, super-inexpensive chips that make it orders of magnitude cheaper/simpler to create reliable 2G infrastructure. So much cheaper that using second hand gear is not a better option at scale. > You can now buy a 2G Chinese base station surprisingly cheaply. I imagine FB engineered its own version of similar technology, but with a product focus that is aligned with the company's goals. > Just the expense of running power to the top of the hill It seems to be designed to be mounted on a building, so I'm guessing it's not intended to replace a massive tower installation, but instead to offer a very cheap and useful, easy-to-install access point that happens to do 2G in addition to (or instead of) wifi. > Just setting up the billing arrangements, etc, will be a huge job. Since the users are the product, I think it will likely be free to the end user, at least at first. > but because of the non-existence of basic infrastructure, eg a national phone network to connect to. I think FB has plans to offer bandwidth, both as a carrot to convince local regulators to license it, and also to incentivize various service providers to help with the rollout. Of course, this could this could be a feint: http://vita.mcafee.cc/PDF/feint.pdf http://vita.mcafee.cc/PDF/feint.pdf
Swannie 10y ago
I agree. Crazy. To quote: "In many cellular network deployments, the cost of the civil and supporting infrastructure (land, tower, security, power, and backhaul) is often much greater than the cost of the cellular access point itself." Indeed, this is not an order of magnitude question - several orders of magnitude. "One of our goals was to make architectural and design improvements that would result in lower costs associated with the civil and supporting infrastructure." Hmm, really? Facebook don't think that the established players in the market are not aggressively pursuing the same design improvements? Will this spur them on? Marginally, yes. This is not a hard market to get into, with commodity off the shelf chips for cells being available (e.g. from Intel via MindSpeed via PicoChip). It's good to see Facebook investing in fundamental R&D. I just can't shake the feeling they are struggling to find areas to make strategic plays if this is the best that they can do.

grandalf 10y ago

> The argument seems to be that the cost of phone base stations is holding back development in 3rd world countries I'd say not quite: Since most of the first world dollars go into cutting edge technology, there is low-hanging fruit in the now-miniaturized, super-inexpensive chips that make it orders of magnitude cheaper/simpler to create reliable 2G infrastructure. So much cheaper that using second hand gear is not a better option at scale. > You can now buy a 2G Chinese base station surprisingly cheaply. I imagine FB engineered its own version of similar technology, but with a product focus that is aligned with the company's goals. > Just the expense of running power to the top of the hill It seems to be designed to be mounted on a building, so I'm guessing it's not intended to replace a massive tower installation, but instead to offer a very cheap and useful, easy-to-install access point that happens to do 2G in addition to (or instead of) wifi. > Just setting up the billing arrangements, etc, will be a huge job. Since the users are the product, I think it will likely be free to the end user, at least at first. > but because of the non-existence of basic infrastructure, eg a national phone network to connect to. I think FB has plans to offer bandwidth, both as a carrot to convince local regulators to license it, and also to incentivize various service providers to help with the rollout. Of course, this could this could be a feint: http://vita.mcafee.cc/PDF/feint.pdf http://vita.mcafee.cc/PDF/feint.pdf

Swannie 10y ago

I agree. Crazy. To quote: "In many cellular network deployments, the cost of the civil and supporting infrastructure (land, tower, security, power, and backhaul) is often much greater than the cost of the cellular access point itself." Indeed, this is not an order of magnitude question - several orders of magnitude. "One of our goals was to make architectural and design improvements that would result in lower costs associated with the civil and supporting infrastructure." Hmm, really? Facebook don't think that the established players in the market are not aggressively pursuing the same design improvements? Will this spur them on? Marginally, yes. This is not a hard market to get into, with commodity off the shelf chips for cells being available (e.g. from Intel via MindSpeed via PicoChip). It's good to see Facebook investing in fundamental R&D. I just can't shake the feeling they are struggling to find areas to make strategic plays if this is the best that they can do.