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Vodafone unveils prototype 5G network built on a Raspberry Pi computer
- polalavik 4y ago> Vodafone is now looking at ways to democratise MPNs and extend their benefits to micro and small business owners whilst lowering the entry cost and reducing the resources needed to experience new digital services oh like... maybe making it open source? Or democratization as in "sell as many as possible"?
- radicaldreamer 4y agoSell as many as possible and require an on-going service/support contract or charge by usage.
- deusum 4y agoSoftware updates discontinued after twelve months. New hardware required for modest <insert basic feature> improvement.
- DaiPlusPlus 4y ago> Software updates discontinued after twelve months. It could be worse: we are talking about a retail consumer phone network operator here: so I'm thinking... operator-mandated nonremovable shovelware pre-installed in the only supported base OS image. Oh, and Candy Crush Saga too.
- sacrosancty 4y ago[dead]
- ariendj 4y agoI hope they really push this concept and sell the hardware at a loss. A lime micro SDR with a raspberry pi in a box is a radio hacker's dream come true.
- hinkley 4y agoIf we could get an off the shelf SOC that's powerful enough to manage a PCIe daughter card, that would make me so happy. Software defined radio, offloaded eBPF, RAID controllers, are just the most obvious compute peripherals but there are a million others that could exist but don't. edit: acronym typo
- miniman1337 4y agoCM4 supports it, although its just 1x and PCIe 2.0
- monocasa 4y agoThe RPi4 SoC has a lot constraints wrt PCIe and frankly appears to not implement the PCIe spec completely or correctly. A lot PCIe devices simply don't work with it.
- Schattenbaer 4y agoWe maybe come from different worlds but I have soc == security operations centre and ebnf == extended Backus-Naur form. What are these in the context of your comment, though?
- EwanToo 4y agoSoC in this case is a system on a chip - despite the "a" it's abbreviated the same https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_on_a_chip https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_on_a_chip
- ggm 4y agoVodafone move to occupy the radio frequency spectrum by co-opting the builder/maker culture, but actually don't care about that as much as the future revenue potential in visibly using 5G frequencies so the regulator has to acknowledge 'prior occupancy' when deciding frequency collision issues in the market.
- borland 4y agoIsn't this just "Now you can pay to purchase and operate hardware to compensate for our crappy coverage, so we don't have to improve it ourselves?"
- jbverschoor 4y agoThey already sell 5g stations to use in your home when they don't have coverage.
- moremetadata 4y agoI dont know if I want to be so close to a 5G transmitter after reading this: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34778597/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34778597/
- Dylan16807 4y agoHahaha I googled the first author: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96D-vi59Czs&t=190 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96D-vi59Czs&t=190
- CamperBob2 4y agoIt turns out that the barriers to publication on pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov are very low.
- moremetadata 4y agoI've tracked the link down to https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Ajctres.com+Evidence+for+a+connection+between+coronavirus+disease-19+and+exposure+to+radiofrequency+radiation+from+wireless+communications+including+5G https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Ajctres.com+Evidence+f... https://www.jctres.com/media/downloads/jctres07202105007/%5B5%5D%20JCTR_v7i5_007_20211025_V3.pdf https://www.jctres.com/media/downloads/jctres07202105007/%5B... Beverly Rubik Department of Mind-Body Medicine, College of Integrative Medicine and Health Sciences, Saybrook University, Pasadena CA, USA; Institute for Frontier Science, Oakland, CA, USA Robert R. Brown Department of Radiology, Hamot Hospital, University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, Erie, PA; Radiology Partners, Phoenix, AZ, USA Michal Heger Department of Pharmaceutics, Utrecht University, the Netherlands; Department of Pharmaceutics, Jiaxing University Medical College, Zhejiang, China The review process for submission and subsequent comments/suggestions to gain publication can be read here. https://www.jctres.com/media/filer_public/5b/02/5b021dc8-6d59-409c-bfa0-9be649dc47d7/review_process_jctres07202105007.pdf https://www.jctres.com/media/filer_public/5b/02/5b021dc8-6d5...
- secondcoming 4y agoWhat's the benefit over a normal 5G router? I'd imagine SDR is somewhat power hungry, not ideal in the current energy climate in some countries. I did try using a bog-standard 5G mobile phone as a dedicated hotspot, but there's quite a speed drop so I assume Android isn't optimised at all for this use-case, which is a shame since 5G routers are essentially stripped down mobile phones. Huawei seem to dominate the 5G router space (I have one as they were the only ones supplying one at the time I needed one), Nokia have a 'Fast Mile' offering but it seems it's not for the end consumer. They're missing a trick here IMO. I also would be very reluctant to use equipment from an MNO, epecially since they all seem to be onboard with TrustPid [0] for marketing purposes bullshit. [0] https://www.trustpid.com/ https://www.trustpid.com/
- eloy 4y agoFunny how Vodafone manages to write an entire article about a femtocell they built without using that word a single time.
- Diapason 4y agoThis. Also calling a piece of hardware a 'network' sounds weird to me.
- wmf 4y agoIn the telco world there is a distinction between cellular base stations that require an elaborate backend network and fairly new base stations that can work standalone because the "network" is built in.
- eloy 4y agoYeah, it's this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network-In-a-Box https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network-In-a-Box
- foobarbecue 4y agoSo that's where all the Pis went then I guess.
- Quillbert182 4y agoSo that's where they all went.
- atlgator 4y agoIsn't this just a femtocell with off-the-shelf hardware inside?
- smcl 4y agoOk this is cool but maybe Vodafone can focus on more customer-oriented things like figuring out how I can pay them the -7000 CZK they've been harassing me about for 2 months. Effectively I overpaid last year (due to their billing stupidity) and now they've been threatening to disconnect if I don't pay them minus US$315-ish. I don't quite know how to do that legally... Stupid company.
- Benjamin_Dobell 4y agoYou just made me realise something. For 10 years, every month I'd received an SMS saying: > Your latest bill $-0.02 on [... blah blah...] From a telco provider I no longer use. Turns out they finally stopped messaging me in November last year. I wonder if they worked it out or whether their system gives up after 10 years. Hopefully you don't have to wait that long!
- mouse_ 4y agoI wonder if there's a way we could estimate the global power consumption for digital junk mail in units of tons of coal
- wumms 4y ago~ 4-5 million tons of coal (33 TWh in 2009) - Equals ~1/3rd of Bitcoin's energy consumption (~115 TWh per year, 2022) [6] - A pile of 8 million tons of coal is ~1/2km (~1/3 mile) in diameter and 167m (549ft) high [3] - Poland uses 10 million tons of coal a year to heat households (2017) [4] - Annual world coal production 7,741.6 million t (2020) [5] 33bn kWh [0] = 4.056.268 TCE (Ton Of Coal Equivalent) [1] 33bn kWh / 6.7 kWh/kg [2] / 1.000 kg/t = 4.925.373 t [0] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2009/apr/15/spam-mcafee-symantec-emails-environment https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2009/apr/15/spam-mcaf... [1] https://www.justintools.com/unit-conversion/energy.php?k1=terawatt-hour&k2=ton-of-coal-equivalent https://www.justintools.com/unit-conversion/energy.php?k1=te... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal [3] https://www.sightline.org/2013/07/03/what-8-million-tons-of-coal-looks-like/ https://www.sightline.org/2013/07/03/what-8-million-tons-of-... [4] https://www.dw.com/en/coal-rich-poland-faces-winter-of-energy-discontent/a-62759074 https://www.dw.com/en/coal-rich-poland-faces-winter-of-energ... -> https://www.dw.com/en/can-poland-end-its-toxic-relationship-with-coal/a-46356824 https://www.dw.com/en/can-poland-end-its-toxic-relationship-... [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_coal_production https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_coal_prod... [6] https://www.statista.com/statistics/881472/worldwide-bitcoin-energy-consumption/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/881472/worldwide-bitcoin...
- andrewstuart 4y agoThis is the reason why you can't get a Raspberry Pi computer. Eben Upton, (Raspberry Pi Founder) sold out his his base. When the chip shortage hit, Upton made the decision to prioritise supply to industrial buyers over retail/hobbyists/education. His rationale was that companies that had bills to pay and salaries to pay should get priority because people's livelihoods depended on getting those Raspberry Pi's. Sounds good. But years down the track, nothing changed. What should have happened is that Upton should have given the industrial buyers a six months warning to find other ways to build their products instead of Raspberry Pi. That never happened. Instead, Raspberry Pi simply turned into a dedicated industrial computing supplier. Businesses have the means and the expertise to redesign their products around different computing technology - they did not need a blanket commitment forever from Raspberry Pi to support their technology directions. The outcome of this decision has been that Raspberry Pi and Eben Upton have sold out the community that got Raspberry pi to where it is. He sold out the kids and the schools and sold out the hobbyists. I think that in the Covid time, if anything, he should have prioritised schools and children. When they were sitting at home in lockdown they could have been learning computing with a Raspberry Pi. So its now years down the track and nothing has changed. You can't get a Raspberry Pi because they are sold to industrial buyers like Vodafone. Raspberry Pi's loyal community and especially the kids and the schools deserved better than being sold out. There's lots of alternatives to Raspberry Pi - give them your loyalty and your money.... here's some: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8clrUclPIs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8clrUclPIs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGcWLgAk5kA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGcWLgAk5kA
- cushychicken 4y agoRaspberry Pi is a corporate endeavor as well. They also have employees, and a payroll to maintain. Seems a bit harsh to blame them for selling their products to the customers who are most able to pay for them, which enables them to stay in business. (Whatever quantity Vodafone is buying is DEFINITELY more than any hobbyist is able to pay.)
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- aaron695 4y ago[dead]
- AceJohnny2 4y ago> and an equally small, advanced silicon chipset. That's like the old cartoon joke: "Thinking quickly, Dave [the Barbarian] constructs a homemade megaphone, using only some string, a squirrel, and a megaphone." The RasPi is incidental to the complexity of the system. Methinks they only used that for the headline attention. Success!
- rcarmo 4y agoThis. So much this. Like I wrote elsewhere in the comments, it’s Mobile World Congress week and the telco industry hype is peaking.
- jsmith99 4y agoFor certain industrial uses or to cover large areas I see the benefit of private 5g networks, but for home/SMB (the apparent target) didn't femtocells dissapear years ago because they were killed off by WiFi calling? This seems to be a solved problem.
- synergy20 4y agoa longer range high speed wifi that is. it also can be used to hijack your calls and sms based 2FA in a drive-by car in no time.
- bit604 4y agoWhy would you connect to this type of router over a WiFi router?
- metadat 4y agoWould this be plugged into your home Internet link, or what is the backhaul connection comprised of?
- rektide 4y agoSomeone do wifi next! I cant wait for a good option for assembling APs from parts.