Would it be possible to make a free cell phone network?
Here’s the plan: Get authorization to use a some available radio band or use the same band that Wi-Fi or some other devices use. Every phone works both as a phone and a repeater, thus the phones can’t be turned off by the user. When you make a call, it is bounced from phone to phone to phone to the other phone you’re calling, completely bypassing traditional phone companies. Of course, there has to be a critical mass of such phones for such a system to work and to have reliable service.
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That’s not what I meant. What I mean is that the phones themselves are the network. I didn’t mean that some company would give you free access to their network if you share your bandwidth or some other condition.
I understood you meant something different. I was just throwing out an idea.
You mean kind of an ad-hoc mesh network? I believe they are actually working on that, or at least for data but with VOIP and smartphones, the difference between data and voice is bandwidth.
Let me poke @koanhead as he is more into that end of things than I am.
@jaytkay – Np :-)
@jerv – You mean there’s actually a term for that sort of thing? I’m not the one who thunk it up?
I believe you’d run into some limiters pretty quickly
1) your phone battery isn’t going to broadcast with much power, power = range, you’re also cutting into battery life
2) Less range means you need more phones to reach your “critical mass”
3) bandwidth in and out of your phone would need to be high to carry not only your conversation, but all the others you’re acting as a repeater for
@funkdaddy – Yeah. You’re right. So okay…when you buy one of these phones, it comes with the phone and a repeater (which looks like a wireless router) that you keep plugged in. All these “routers” work together to provide a nationwide cellular network.
@HungryGuy As @jerv points out, what you are talking about is called a MANET (short for Mobile Ad-hoc NETwork). The difference between MANETs and regular ad-hoc networks is that MANETs support nodes travelling between subnets.
MANET and Ad-hoc networking is a Layer 2 tech, so it can be and has been done over WiFi. Bandwidth over WiFi is more than sufficient to multiplex a pile of VOIP conversations due to its high frequency, but with high frequency you get short range.
The short range means you need a lot of repeaters and routers. Lots of nodes in an ad-hoc network gives you routing tables that grow non-linearly. The more routers on the network, the more bandwidth is consumed by router adverts.
These problems (and more) are actively being worked on. BATMAN and OLSRD are two projects that attempt to address the routing problems.
Another problem is that the short range means a great many hops per unit of distance. If you want to send a packet 1000 miles, it will pass through more than 10,000 nodes along the way. If each node adds 1ms latency, that means your packet will take a minimum of 10 seconds to arrive! This kind of latency will kill your phone conversation.
To solve this, the local MANETs need each to be tied into a long-range link, whether it be a conventional Internet connection, a lower-frequency radio link between MANETs, or some other link.
If anyone is interested in building such a network in their local area I’d be happy to help with information and links. This is a pet project of mine.
@koanhead – Thanks for the detailed info! Well, it looks impossible with current technology. The routing problem can be addressed with more sophisticated programming as you say is being worked non. And the latency issue can be addressed with faster hardware. Both issues are solvable.
@HungryGuy Just to clarify, these things are not only possible but are currently being done- just not on the scale you envision (yet). The routing problem is addressed by the protocols I mentioned- while not complete, both are currently in a working state.
The latency issue has little to do with the speed of hardware- it’s more a consequence of needing lots of repeaters to get any great distance. Even if each node had 1 usec latency instead of 1ms you’d have problems going any great distance. It makes sense to save hops when you can, so long-distance links are going to be part of any successful network of this type.
One hundred years, the mere concept of miniature electronics would be considered ludicrous. Even the Lensman series which had things like inertialess starship drives and psionics had computers the size of a house with less power than a 2011 netbook made of little vacuum tubes; transistors didn’t exist until later.
Fifty years ago, if you told them that phones would not require wires and computers would be in almost every American house, you would be considered insane.
Twenty-five years ago, if you told someone that portable phones would be the size of a deck of cards instead of a sidewalk brick, or that computers would have CPU speeds measured in gigahertz, they would look at you funny.
Technology has come a long way since the telegraph and slide rule, but we haven’t exactly kept pace with it. I mean, IPv6 has been around for many years but we stuck with IPv4 until we ran out of address space and now are kludging our way around it instead of having solved it back when it wasn’t a problem yet. But just as it was once thought that nobody would want/need a home computer, that 640KB of RAM was more than enough for anyone, etcetera, it was once thought that there would never be more than 4,294,967,296 nodes on the Internet.
I have no doubt that we will figure something out fairly soon… assuming bureaucratic red tape doesn’t slow/halt progress.
@jerv – Actually, it’s not in the best interests of our corporate overlords for people to have a user-configured nationwide network of free cell phones. That’s the biggest problem such a scheme faces…
The biggest problem is that it doesn’t offer anything that the commercial products don’t and would in fact probably offer less in the way of features.
I’m not trying to be negative on the idea, that just seems to be the way it works.
If there’s a superior product available that costs people money, the free version is left to
1) enthusiasts (either for the values implied, or the technology itself)
2) those who can’t afford the pay option
Most categories of things that are sold have a free or much cheaper alternative that lags behind in terms of use
- public transportation exists very cheaply, the majority (80–90%) of Americans still have a car
– Network television is available for free, the majority (again 80–90%) of American households have some form of premium TV anyway
– Several flavors of Linux are available for free, but it’s achieved only about 1–2% usage while commercial operating systems make up the bulk of the remaining share
It has to be as good as the commercial services or better, or the price won’t really matter to the vast majority of people that use cell phones.
@HungryGuy No, it isn’t. That is where bureaucracy comes in. I mean, who has more leverage when it comes to lobbying legislators or the FCC or anything along those lines; consumers or corporations?
@funkdaddy Pretty much, although I should point out something from Shadowrun:Fourth Edition. Bear with me while I geek out and all will become clear.
In the first three editions set between 2050 and 2064, the Matrix was pretty much like the Internet of the 1990’s (fitting since SR first came out in 1990). It had a centralized structure with servers and such, and you generally accessed The Matrix through either a home computer, a cyberdeck (think laptop with a neural interface instead of a screen) and wireless connections were too slow and unreliable for “decking”.
However, the in-game universe did something that I see possibly happening IRL; the centralized network was destroyed and, after a couple of years with effectively no Matrix, they went to a wireless mesh network in order to prevent a Crash 3.0. Sure, in the SR storyline it was the result of a terrorist organization attacking key servers all over the world, but the point is that the current system has a glaring weakness, as Crash 2.0 illustrated.
The new Matrix cannot be taken down the same way as the old one was. There are still MSPs (like an ISP) so you still have to pay someone for service (at least if you want to to it legally) and there is still quite a markup on commlinks (kind of like a smartphone, only moreso.) and associated software so it’s not like there isn’t money to be made in a wireless mesh network.
And just as people in the real world want to be safe from terrorism after 9/11, people in the SR world want to have a robust, unkillable Matrix, so that is where the “as good or better” part comes into play. You follow?
Of course, if something is technologically possible at all then it is possible to omit the “pay someone for service” part of that equation, thus meaning that the answer to the original question is a resounding “Yes!”.
@jerv – Uhm, in the USA, it’s corporations, isn’t it?
@funkdaddy What do you mean “it doesn’t offer anything commercial products don’t”? What do you mean by “it” in that sentence? As far as I can tell, the question is about a hypothetical infrastructure that hasn’t even been designed yet. How can you tell anything about the features it offers?
Your points about free vs. paid are well taken, but ignore the underlying infrastructure. Transportation, television and all telecommunications rely on infrastructure which is owned “in common” and developed at common expense. An infrastructure necessary for an ad-hoc phone network already exists and is available for public use. The one I point out can do things of which the cell phone network is not capable (due to lower bandwidth).
As for Linux user share, you seem to be counting only desktop use. Most people have only 1 or 2 computers on their desks. Facebook has more than 10,000 linux hosts in its datacenters. Google has some rather larger number.The great majority of webservers today run Apache under Linux, and most big sites have hundreds or thousands of load-balancing servers. Every user of Facebook, Google, or Amazon is a Linux user.
@HungryGuy Yep… for now… until the government becomes an empty husk and the corporations take more overt control :D
@jerv – I guess my thought would be if a distributed network becomes superior for some reason like vulnerability to attack, what keeps the companies in the cell phone business, who have greater resources, a greater need to keep their network up, and a dedicated workforce from implementing it with existing customers without the need for an early adopter period?
@koanhead – the examples were illustrations that people don’t necessarily move towards “free” simply because of price. As far as ad hoc networks working on existing infrastructure, I’d argue the infrastructure only exists in this case if
a) enough people to make a viable network know it exists
b) they decide to use it
I don’t think either is met right now to make a competitive nationwide network. Which brings me back to my original point. It (“the people’s network”) doesn’t offer anything that a commercially available product doesn’t.
I feel like I’m coming across as negative on the idea, and that’s not my intent. My intent was just to point out that people don’t flock to free, they flock to easy. Right now the cell phone companies are doing pretty well on easy so the challenge with the whole idea wouldn’t be the technology alone. In my opinion (just my opinion) the greater challenge would be to reach the “critical mass” outlined in the original idea. Until you can beat commercial products on more than price, I don’t believe it’s compelling enough to draw the crowds you need.
As far as linux use, I was only quoting desktop use, because every user of facebook or other websites doesn’t choose the hosting platform, they do choose a platform for their desktop so I think it’s more indicative of consumer preference. At a minimum it shows their level of awareness for each option. Linux is still (proudly) in the realm of enthusiasts when it comes to desktops.
@funkdaddy Changing the infrastructure costs more than using what is already in place. Why invest in the future when that would involve cutting into profits now?
@funkdaddy I read your response a few times, but I still can’t parse what you are trying to say. Also, you didn’t bother to answer the two specific questions I asked.
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