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OpenBSC: 3G Voice Works
- bigpoppa 10y agothe FCC needs to allow citizen bank cellular spectrum
- jdavis703 10y agoThis reminds me of being a kid in the 90s trying to sort through all the acronyms and cryptic messages trying to get Linux installed. Maybe 15 years from now we'll be able to click a couple of buttons on a slick website and have our own 3G network up and running.
- userbinator 10y agoNot if the FCC and other regulatory agencies have anything to say about it... But telecoms standards are certainly extremely complex; mainly because they are truly designed by very large committees with plenty of bureaucratic process. I did briefly try to read through and comprehend all the 3GPP standards in order to understand the whole system end-to-end --- from the microphone of one mobile to the speaker of another --- but gave up pretty early, and I'd consider myself pretty knowledgeable about the Internet stack from HTML through HTTP, TLS, TCP, and IP, all the way down to the bits on an Ethernet cable or the signals an 802.11b/g transceiver emits. If you've seen the 802.11 standard, that's about the limit of what I can still understand with a bit of effort. The 3GPP specs are in a similar style of thick standardese, but around 10x denser and more voluminous. Then again, I don't think it's impossible --- maybe if I had a lot more free time and interest I could. After all, Fabrice Bellard wrote his own 4G base station: http://bellard.org/lte/ http://bellard.org/lte/ Some people can explain all the details of what happens when someone visits a URL in their browser. Maybe Fabrice can explain all the details of what happens when someone turns on a mobile, associates with a network, and makes a call with it.
- tekacs 10y agoIt's been related to me in the past that the 3G/UMTS network stack is famously insanely complex and that the 4G/LTE stack is noticeably less so. So that might factor into your trouble with 3G and Bellard's success with LTE. :)
- kbart 10y ago3GPP set is easily among the worst standards I've ever read. I often thought that it was deliberately made so, in order lesser companies and individuals would not be able to make their own baseband. Not to mention references to proprietary documents.. I'm very impressed that somebody managed to make a working BS out of this. Still it's strange to choose 3g, 4g is much lighter technology.
- neeels 10y agore "strange to choose 3g": as some operators even phase out 3G completely, we can expect 3G base stations to be available cheaper than ever. That's only one of the reasons: Osmocom started out from the security analysis perspective; having 3G openly available is a benefit to the general public as well as small business in various ways. (The opening lines of https://osmocom.org/news/30 https://osmocom.org/news/30: "3G is dead, you may think. From the perspective of large scale operators, that may well be the case, but this is precisely the reason why Open Source support for 3G is becoming increasingly interesting: when the focus for earning money shifts towards LTE infrastructure, the threshold for setting up 3G networks is becoming easier to surpass for everyone else.")
- kbart 10y ago3g operates on licensed frequencies (sold for billions in some countries[1]), so you won't be able to setup a functioning network anyway. Maybe in some 3rd world country, in the middle of nowhere or a tiny femtocell.. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectrum_auction#Germany https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectrum_auction#Germany
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- hackaflocka 10y agoIs this potentially an open-source self-hosted alternative to Twilio?
- detaro 10y agoNot really. This is tech to create your own 3G phone basis station and network, for a twilio clone you want something that connects to the existing phone networks, and probably over some kind of internet protocol and not wirelessly ;)
- mynameislegion 10y agoConnects to the existing phone networks probably requires money and special contracts with existing phone network providers.
- toomuchtodo 10y agoAs does using certain wireless spectrum. It _is_ easier to write a Twilio clone (as in, it can be done with sufficient time and resources); you just need to call bandwidth.com with your checkbook open and ask them to interconnect.
- WhitneyLand 10y agoSince not everyone knows the background/industry it might help to: Add a simple overview explaining the motivation, goals, and ultimate value created by Osmocom Explain why you are working on 3G when it's not a new technology Explain how everything is going to be free as you claim without running into any IP / patent issues.
- voltagex_ 10y agoIt's not that kind of website. OpenBSC and associated projects have been around for a very long time. They're working on 3G because it's the next logical step for where their project is up to.
- WhitneyLand 10y agoThe main site doesn't have this info either from what I could find: https://osmocom.org https://osmocom.org. Is there a better site? You say it's been around a long time,but how is that relevant? They are actively asking for support so it's good to get their ideas known. Your response about 3g doesn't inform much. To the lay person 3g is old tech so it's a natural question to want to know how it will help people. Undeveloped areas without a lot of investment capital maybe? Why should we guess?
- vertex-four 10y agoNote that 3G is still current-ish around the world, and is often what you'll pick up in rural areas many places. In my country, it's pretty much just major city centres that have 4G, and many phones still exist which don't support it. In my city, it's often incredibly difficult to pick up 4G because of granite buildings. Osmocom's goal is to create an open source implementation of mobile telecom standards. An open source implementation would allow people and companies to build non-encumbered mobile devices and telecom networks. This is important if you think free software is generally an important thing. Osmocom run a GSM network at CCC each year, allowing people to place calls and send text messages to each other for free.
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- droopybuns 10y agoHsdpa will be the really exciting accomplishment. Congrats on this in-between step!
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- zamnedix 10y agohttps://cdn.meme.am/instances/54715963.jpg https://cdn.meme.am/instances/54715963.jpg
- nikanj 10y agoI'd appreciate it if we wouldn't turn into yet-another-reaction-gif news aggregator.
- zamnedix 10y agohttp://i0.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/198/020/BRTky.jpg http://i0.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/198/020/BRT...
- cnvogel 10y agoIf you don't know most of the things mentioned, but are interested what all of it means...: I recommend some of the talks of Harald which consist (by neccessity, he's a great speaker) mostly of acronyms, and he's explaining most of it (within the limits of time imposed by the talk). e.g. https://media.ccc.de/v/32c3-7412-running_your_own_3g_3_5g_network https://media.ccc.de/v/32c3-7412-running_your_own_3g_3_5g_ne... (edit: typo)
- zamnedix 10y agoThis is actually really helpful, thanks a lot
- mrsheen 10y agoIt seems that this https://www.amazon.com/Mikrotik-RB951G-2HND-5-Port-Gigabit-Wireless/dp/B00EQWUZM6 https://www.amazon.com/Mikrotik-RB951G-2HND-5-Port-Gigabit-W... has all you need for much less $$ and time.
- mynameislegion 10y agoThat has nothing to do with 3G, it is just WiFi.
- i336_ 10y agoAs someone who doesn't follow the cellular scene as much as I probably should, the immediate question I ask is: what is the impact of this development work from the security standpoint of (potentially stealth) voice/data interception on ordinary telco-provisioned cellular devices? I realize GSM implements horribly broken authentication schemes, that almost all cellular devices out there implement GSM (and GSM fallback) in order to be implementationally complete, and that it's subsequently trivially possible to (near-transparently) take over arbitrary devices using reasonably inexpensive hardware and a bunch of open software if you can jam the 2.5G, 3G and 4G bands. I'm just curious what the hurdles are to do this for 3G (and beyond), from an academic security standpoint. There are obviously whole swaths of layered encryption and so forth that would need to be dealt with, I expect that; and I admit my total ignorance - and curiosity! - as to what that is. I vaguely recall obtuse rumors that suggest the existence of privately-owned 3G implementation(s) out there that do what I'm describing. I'm curious if this open-source work is lowering the barrier to the accessibility for this sort of thing. This is an important question - I recall reading at least one story (I think from here) about the questionable legality of unsolicited cellular wiretapping operations (done via GSM) that have been noted by the news media. (As an aside, I think that open-source GSM implementations exist is kind of neat - if you're ever in the middle of nowhere (or an equivalent setting) and you can setup base stations, old GSM phones are hundreds of times cheaper than CB radios.)
- myself248 10y ago> what is the impact of this development work from the security standpoint of (potentially stealth) voice/data interception I think those things already exist, the Stingray is just the most-publicized of its ilk. Big price tags provide plenty of incentive for closed-source implementations, or possibly just licensing something already made. The open-source versions often serve to democratize or to remind, of the possibilities that've existed for some time. I think it'll enable some small-fish to do bad things that the big-fish have been doing for years.