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Communications

A Private GSM Cell? 78

Posted by Cliff from the you-are-your-own-provider dept.
mr number two asks: "I live in the mountains and have poor GSM reception. I can buy an active repeater to boost signal strength in my home to good levels, but what I'd really like to do is have a private GSM picocell, such that at home I would be connected to my own PBX. Calls to my home phone number would ring through to my cell phone. I wouldn't have to worry about a home cordless phone (and 802.11 interference) and I'd have all my speed dialing / contacts info right there. There are many other benefits. Ignoring FCC licensing issues, is there a base station I can purchase which has a signalling interface that will interface to a small PBX?"
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A Private GSM Cell? More

A Private GSM Cell?

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  • I've heard about cell phones that have a base station that plugs into your home phone line to give you access to both when at home... do those do the trick?

  • Heres a GSM to VOIP gateway (Score:5, Informative)

    by madstork2000 ( 143169 ) * on Friday May 27, 2005 @11:59AM (#12655879) Homepage
    This looks like it might be helpful:

    http://www.voip-info.org/wiki-VOIP+GSM+Gateways [voip-info.org]

    The site www.voip-info.org itself looked promising during my brief visit....

    • Re:Heres a GSM to VOIP gateway (Score:5, Informative)

      by gregmac ( 629064 ) on Friday May 27, 2005 @12:28PM (#12656138) Homepage
      That's backwards from what he's asking for - that essentially acts as a cell phone, and makes it available using VoIP. Effectively, if you had an asterisk box, you could have your cell phone number ring into it or use it to make outbound calls, which would be useful in remote locations with no phone lines, or probably even more useful as an emergency backup in the event regular phone lines go down.

      The original question is asking for a way to use his cellphone as an extension on the PBX, so this wouldn't be useful in that situation.
    • I think what you want is a cell phone that switches to VOIP [mobiletracker.net] when in range of your wi-fi spot. Obviously, the major carriers have little incentive to offer this.
  • I use vonage and have the simulring feature turned on to ring my cell at the same time- then I have my cell set to forward after a set time back to the main number- this is awesome because all my numbers now ring to all my phones and since vonage has free incoming calls and the cell doesn't, I can manage my time with both plans more easily. All calls also end up in the same voicemail box with the vonage account and then that emails the message to me so I never have to check it manually.
    This system has worke
    • WTF. Wouldn't this just create an endless loop? If you send the vonage to the cell and then the cell back to the vonage, when does the voicemail kick in???
      • nope, no endless loop. the main vonage # doesn't forward- it simultaniously rings and then the cell forwards back to the main # after somany seconds- the main # does not consider this a new call and it's timed to go into the vonage voicemail at that point. This does everything I want without a pbx- that's why I recommend it. I'm not certain how it works so perfectly, but it does.
    • I've also got Vonage simulring (love it), but the (Sprint/Treo600) mobile voicemail catches half the calls. How do I set the mobile account to send calls back to Vonage, without triggering another simulring, so the mobile voicemail never gets activated?

      Also, any ideas on how to get Evolution to trigger a script, on receipt of the Vonage voicemail notification email, that sends an SMS to the Treo? With a speeddial hotbutton, or maybe a URL pointing to the Vonage WAV, closing that loop might put me into a si
      • I'm not sure what the evolution you're referring to is, but here's the setup I use and I think it doesn't trigger another simulring because it's probably giving a busy tone at the time, which would kill the cell call right when vonage is switching to voicemail- I would need to test this with a third separate phone. vonage is set for 15 seconsd delay before hitting voicemail and simulring is turned on. on my cell (nokia 3650) I have several forward options and the one I'm using is called 'if not answered' a
        • Ah, your Nokia (or is it your carrier? Which one?) has an option to forward an incoming cell call without going to voicemail. That's the essential link. If my phone or carrier has that, I can try it - I'll see.

          BTW, Evolution is the MUA (email client) in the GNOME desktop that I use. It has message filtering, probably able to trigger an arbitrary script that could send SMS to my phone. Or, as you point out, I could get my MTA (like sendmail) to trap the message, and call an SMS-send script.

          Thanks for the t
          • it's the forward menu in the phone software itself. I use t-mobile for service. I just tested the system with another outside line and it's not in fact getting a busy, so I'm not positive why it doesn't loop, but it doesn't. yeah, the phone forwards after 10 seconds, before it would hit the service providers voicemail. I don't use gnome, but it sounds cool- I may try this later with sendmail.

  • Ignoring FCC rules? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by whib ( 693974 ) on Friday May 27, 2005 @12:03PM (#12655926) Homepage
    Sure, there are many, many options, if you are willing to ignore the rules.......

    Everything is available for a price.

    On the other hand, I might suggest searching for a solution that does not ignore the rules. Rules for communication systems are (for the most part) fairly sane. The avoid pesky things such as cross talk, interference, etc. But hey, this is Slash, who really cares about that kind of thing ;)

  • Check with Tessco (Score:2, Informative)

    by JohnnyGTO ( 102952 )
    they seem to sell alot of different equipment. www.tessco.com

  • Pipe dream (Score:2, Insightful)

    by ADRA ( 37398 )
    Don't waste your time.

    The SIN card you have in your phone is tied to your provider. The provider paid millions/billions to license a GSM band in the US.

    The technology that actually powers this is inhibitivly expensive. If you wanted to hack your own non-rules based GSM station, then you'll have to worry about the FCC and anyone else not liking you break the law.

    It'd be more feasible to hack in a second antenna, talk circuit into your cell. I don't see it being easy even on bulky phones, but its possible.
    • It's SIM, but whatever. For the most part you're right.

    • Don't waste your time.

      The SIN card you have in your phone is tied to your provider.

      Really? I didn't know that place in the cellphone business too (although looking at the contract again it doesn't surprise me). How's the thermal insulation on these cards?
  • There's a lot of models that are similar to cell phones, and many have ranges of up to 30 miles.

    Here's an example.
    http://www.4cellular.com/cordless/ [4cellular.com]

    Googling for cordless phone long range returned a lot of results.
  • Cingular used to sell an item that did this exact thing. I'd start there.

    -bZj

  • You got the necessary huge sack of money then? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Tiersten ( 58773 ) on Friday May 27, 2005 @12:30PM (#12656166)
    Sure. You can do what you want but the hardware is incredibly expensive and you'd need a license to operate as a telecoms provider which also is incredibly expensive. If you're looking for a way to reduce your cell phone bills then this isn't it.

    Since you're going to be operating a transmitter it's not going to be too hard to find out where that rogue cell signal is coming from either.

    Don't think that they won't notice because you're up in the moutains. People are employed to drive around with a pile equipement and do site surveys. There was an article with pics about it recently.

  • Cordless Phone interference ? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by MerlynEmrys67 ( 583469 ) on Friday May 27, 2005 @12:33PM (#12656196)
    Why in the H*** would a computer geek even consider buying a cordless phone in the 802.11 frequency range.

    There are two options, either of which avoids the problem, either 900Mhz or 5Ghz (you weren't planning on deploying 802.11a were you ?)

    Please tell me you didn't go out and buy the coolest phone a few years back in the 2.4Ghz range, and now aren't willing to "upgrade" to a 5Ghz phone.

    • 900mhz interferes with Proxim wireless. I can't give up wireless Apple Newton, not after finally making it work.
    • -good- 2.4GHz phones (a'la Siemens Gigasets) don't interfere with 802.11b/g/n/whatever.

      And 5GHz phones have a tendency to not work as well (for me) through my house due to solid construction.

      My microwave interferes with my phone, but neither interferes with my wireless.

      Crappy 2.4GHz phones (a'la Panasonic) do, but that doesn't mean they all do.
    • Why in the H*** would a computer geek even consider buying a cordless phone in the 802.11 frequency range.

      There are two options, either of which avoids the problem, either 900Mhz or 5Ghz (you weren't planning on deploying 802.11a were you ?)

      Please tell me you didn't go out and buy the coolest phone a few years back in the 2.4Ghz range, and now aren't willing to "upgrade" to a 5Ghz phone.

      Make sure you take a look at your 5 GHz phone's spec sheet before purchasing.

      Many "5.8 GHz" phones I have seen trans
      • Many "5.8 GHz" phones I have seen transmit from the phone to the base station on 5 GHz, and the base station to the phone at 2.4 GHz. (It might be the other way around, but you get the idea). If WiFi interference is your concern, many supposed 5 GHz phones are no comfort.

        Most likely it is 5Ghz from the base station to the handset and 2.4Ghz from the handset to the base station.

        The base station has to use more power to get the signal to go through walls at 5Ghz and they use 2.4Ghz from the handset to exte

  • Cell, or Network? (Score:5, Informative)

    by poindextrose ( 640377 ) <sliderule@gma[ ]com ['il.' in gap]> on Friday May 27, 2005 @12:36PM (#12656228) Homepage
    Administering a wireless telecommunications switch, I have to ask: do you want a network of your own with no ties to other carriers, or just a cell?

    If you're looking for a "just you" thing, good luck. The GSM standards are pretty easy to get your hands on, and with a little ingenuity, you could build a GSM switch. It's basically a few DBs and hardware interfaces. That's where things get tricky. GSM cells (which you could easily purchase for $100,000 (CDN)) need to communicate to the switch using a standardized protocol over T1. So you'd have to build THAT network stack over some sort of Frame-Relay-over-T1 interface (which are often rather expensive in and of themselves... also, good luck with Linux drivers...).

    I left out the possibility of buying a GSM switch, because I doubt you'd be on Ask Slashdot if you had that kind of cash.

    Now I know you said "apart from FCC regulations" or something, but that's what's going to kill you. GSM uses a 200KHz carrier (at least with the 800 and 900 MHz spectrum), and to put a site on the air with any sort of wattage in any location of any use (you are in rough terrain, no? So you'd put in on a peak... and spread your signal pretty far) without interfering with anyone else and without the FCC turning your way is going to be quite tricky.
    • GSM cells (which you could easily purchase for $100,000 (CDN)
      so that's like US $ 2?
    • While I applaud any attempt by a private individual to write their own GSM stack, I would like to point out a few things (based on personal experience of writing software for GSM devices):
      • There are a LOT of documents to download! Several hundred!
      • Some of these documents are BIG! The spec covering the communication between the different layers of the protocol stack on a device alone comes to well over 1000 pages. There are several more specs like that lying around.
      • These specs are written in a language tha

  • This topic reminds me... (Score:5, Funny)

    by nekoniku ( 183821 ) <justicek.infosource@info> on Friday May 27, 2005 @12:52PM (#12656392) Homepage
    I have a problem with mosquitoes in my yard and I wonder if anyone has some good advice on the best kind of cannon and ammo I should get to shoot them down?

  • A different kind of cell (Score:3, Funny)

    by lbmouse ( 473316 ) on Friday May 27, 2005 @01:34PM (#12656907) Homepage
    Ignoring FCC licensing issues

    That could get you a 6 x 9 cell with a roommate.

  • Odds are you can't do anything yourself (FCC). However your provider can. Complain that you don't have strong service and they might put a new tower up in your area. Depending on how much money you have to spend they might allow you to connect your VOIP network.

    • HA

      you're kidding right?

      Once you've heard the words:
      "No we don't have towers in that area and don't have plans to put one up
      you'll realise how hilarious your suggestion is

      • Actually no. They do take customer input on where to put towers. It takes a year to install one, and they might decide not to put one up. If you don't ask for it though, they will never know you want it. If there is demand in one area and none in a different, they fill the demand. If there is a tower that nobody uses it is a waste to put it up.

        Not to mention there is always some rich fool who can afford a hostile take over of a cell phone company just to force a tower in that area.

        • Of course they take customer input on tower placment. But they're more inclined to place towers where they need it the most e.g. the most cutomers will be satisfied -- like near the brand new housing development or that annoying spot on the freeway where calls always drop. The middle of nowhere comes last, unless there's a lot of new development or a nice expressway there.

          and as for "some rich fool" -- get real. most of the big us cell companies are wholly owned subsidaries of much larger corporations.

    1. Move out of the mountains
    2. Switch to CDMA (Verizon).

  • Easy (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Richard_at_work ( 517087 ) on Friday May 27, 2005 @03:39PM (#12658441)
    Speak to a GSM network providor, like Vodaphone, Orange, O2 or something (to give UK examples). All of these providors will sell you a local cell unit, its a service they provide to companies with large sites or campuses, to use mobile phones instead of DECT phones across a wide area with automatic roaming off site. Calls within the same cell are free, with a annual rental, and calls off the local cell are charged at the standard airtime rate, and the bonus is that its just a normal mobile cell.
  • Focusing on the original problem of "my cell phone gets bad reception in my house on the mountain" why not purchase a phone that is known for really good reception?

    I bought a Nokia phone specifically for it's reception abilities, and I've had many people on the same wireless carrier that couldn't use their phone in places that I could.

    Pick up a Nokia 6010 (basic phone) or 6230 (if you need all the features) and see if that fixes your problem.

    Why fix the problem with a few hundred thousand dollars when a
    • while those phones are better than some others, they tend to only make a dramatic improvment when coverage in many areas is at a point in between the provider's minimum RSSI (-105 or -110dBm on the 1900MHz GSM networks here) and where other phones can no longer work reliably. this tends to be T-Mobile USA's GSM networks. you can't magically take a -112dBm signal and make it work with another standard gsm phone.

      also, a lot of the supposed "improvment" may have to do with the psychological effect of differen

  • Yagi Antenna [8 Elements] for Cell Phone Frequencies 806-896 Mhz / 870-960 Mhz
    Availability: Usually ships the same business day.

    all Cellular and GSM phones excluding PCS phones
    US $49.95
    • Umm, no, this device will not help you in the USA. Most GSM providers in the USA have GSM only in the ~1900 MHz range with some tiny amounts of GSM coverage in the ~850 MHz range. Cingular is desperately rushing to replace the analog cellular and digital TDMA networks in the ~850 MHz spectrum with GSM (their current phones already try to find a GSM signal there, but very few of them will work in analog, and only one of them will work in TDMA). Unfortunately for Cingular the FCC is mandating analog cellul
      • hmmm, I'm working (Verizon, in N. Ca.) from a mountainside that's line of sight about 20 miles to the nearest cell tower; used to get only analog, now can get digital. If I go five hundred feet downhill, I'm in the shadow of the surrounding mountains and have no cell connection til I drive out past them. This is with just the handheld antenna.

        I had been using an old analog-only dual-mode Nokia phone but recently switched to a Kyocera 6036 (Palm PDA plus tri-mode handset) so I've been looking for a signal
        • Another poster mentioned a place that sells mobile phone repeaters [tessco.com] which may address the problem originally asked. These are virtually the same as the repeaters used by very early analog cellular car phone handsets (the ones that passively transmit the signal through glass to an external antenna) but are specifically designed for both ~850 MHz and ~1900 MHz mobile phones. Most of these repeaters work with all GSM and CDMA providers in the USA, but most of those do not work with Nextel. I was thinking of
  • Perhaps the answer was on slashdot the other day.

    It was a cordless phone with something like a 10 mile range.

  • DECT (Score:2)

    by Kris_J ( 10111 ) *
    I'm not sure, but I think there are some mobile phones that support a 900MHz standard called DECT. It basically a cordless phone standard that allows mobile phones to switch to (cheaper) land-line connections where available. I think.

  • My next Ask Slashdot submission... (Score:4, Funny)

    by biglig2 ( 89374 ) on Friday May 27, 2005 @07:28PM (#12660636) Homepage Journal
    "Hi! I live in a cave and have voices in my head telling me to kill people. I can pay my local prostitute to feign death, but what I'd really like to do is have a private basement pit, such that at home I would be able to do my murders undisturbed. I wouldn't have to worry about getting blood over my slacks, and I'd have all my brain-sized stewing pots right there. There are many other benefits. Ignoring local anti-murder laws, is there a particular type of teen hitch-hiker it's better to prey on?"
  • Depending on geography and tower placement, you might be able to get a decent signal with a CDMA, PCS or AMPS phone...

    Borrow phones from friends and make some test calls to see how they do. I wouldn't just go by number of bars.

    Other possibility is to rig up a directional antennna and plug your phone into that (assuming it has an aux antenna jack). You won't be able to walk around the house and talk, but at least you'll have service.
    • I can back this up. I have a Motorola DPC mobile from 1992 or so, and it uses AMPS. The thing is built like a tank (although it's basically the size of your average cordless phone, so no worries there), and the signal it puts out, something around 5 watts, is almost invincible. In a cinder-block building that's halfway underground in the middle of Indiana, my (GSM) Cingular phone dies. So does my friend's Nextel. And another friend's (CDMA) Verizon. The AMPS is clear as a bell.

  • T-Mobile is rumored to offer in-home VoIP service (Score:3, Insightful)

    by kriston ( 7886 ) on Friday May 27, 2005 @11:58PM (#12662169) Homepage Journal
    T-Mobile has been rumored to offer in-home VoIP service in the fall of 2005. It wouldn't be legal for you to run your own "picocell" as the GSM frequencies are licensed, even in those picocells that the carriers deploy in malls and sporting events.

    T-Mobile's rumored new service will utilize a new class of mobile phones which are GSM and WiFi hybrids. While you are away from home the handset works like a normal GSM phone. When you get home the handset switches to WiFi and connects calls using a wireless VoIP gateway that you connect to your high-speed internet connection. T-Mobile will bundle the hybrig GSM+WiFi mobile phone, the WiFi VoIP gateway device, and the VoIP service. To the mobile phone user the only thing they notice is that their T-Mobile phone works at home and they can finally drop that PSTN line.

    This is in response to the overwhelming T-Mobile customers who tried to use number portability to switch their home phone numbers to T-Mobile and found that their mobile phone didn't work in their homes. Most of T-Mobile's spectrum is 1900 MHz which doesn't penetrate well into buildings. At the same time, T-Mobile (and the other carriers) were spending billions to acquire space in the 800 MHz spectrum to try to improve the situation but someone had the bright idea for T-Mobile to offer all-in-one GSM+VoIP service for much less money than building out their mobile GSM networks which already work really well outdoors.

    I think it's a brilliant plan and it's much cheaper than giving everyone GSM repeaters at $500-$1200 per unit just so their mobile phones will work in the house (but never the basement)... of course the hybrid GSM+WiFi phone *will* work in the basement. It's simply brilliant.

    Let's see if they really roll this service out.

    • So instead of actually building a decent network, they'll just make a VoIP service.

      Great strategy.

      • I have mixed feelings about that. As with many new technologies the marketing oversells the technology so incredibly more than the existing or near-future technology can ever accomplish. Todays' mobile phone networks were designed as mobile phone networks. Now people are being told that yes, indeed, you can take your "mobile" phone and use it in your non-mobile dwelling.

        The CEO of Verizon said this very thing [sfgate.com] earlier this spring. T-Mobile has been saying this all along and recognizes the practicality

        • "almost 100% signal" to "10-50% signal"? that's as unambiguous as "shot by a nerf dart" to "shot by a bullet".

          first, the bars on your phone do not correlate to 100% signal to 10-50% signal. they often measure certain amounts of signal strength, ignoring issues like the actual quality of the signal.

          a good cellular network should be accessible inside most buildings. otherwise, the network is poor. while some buildings *are* wireless-unfriendly, the issue is more often than not simply a poor network, and

  • I know that a big nordic telecommunications company had a so called home base station developed a couple of years ago and has it ready in the cupboard. However they decided regulatory barriers to be too high and didn't launch it as a product.
  • You are describing a standalone GSM picocell e.g.
    http://www.ipaccess.com/ipaccess_2004_pages/bts.ht ml [ipaccess.com]
    http://www.rivanetworks.com/nano/nano.htm [rivanetworks.com]

    To operate one legaly you would presumably need to get an FCC experimental license for limited power output, or permission from an existing carrier.

    One problem with most picocells or microcells is that they are designed to talk to the rest of a GSM network (billing and provisioning systems) and cant really be attached to a simple POTS or PRI line.

    A perso

  • Assumption: internet access. My suggestion is to purchase a wifi phone and a Linksys WRT54G wireless router along with VOIP service...oh yeah, and 2 super long range antennas for the router. The phone and the service are self-explanatory. The router has available an OSS firmware upgrade @ http://www.sveasoft.com/ [sveasoft.com], one advantage of which is to up the power output to the FCC legal limit for said hardware. The antennas (research needed) are required to put that power to use. One should be able to reach a
    • I wouldn't recommend Sveasoft for anything; I've tried a few different versions, and they ranged from "not quite right" to "plain doesn't work." I've heard mutterings that the freely available versions are deliberately broken in order to encourage you to subscribe, but that's neither here nor there. They may technically be OSS but only because the original Linksys firmware they started from was largely GPL. They seem to do whatever they can to avoid the obligations placed on them by t

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