/siberia/ - Off-topic

Back in 2007 they had a 2G cell phone called the Openmoko, which ran Openmoko Linux. You even had terminal access. I would buy an old one, plug it into an old Linux Thinkpad, then add headphones for making calls, then add a ULX3S running custom PHY (TDMA complexity, not OFDMA), then add a LimeSDR PCIe and a receptacle for cat6 ethernet plug-in to laptop. Then add a solar-powered BTS tower w/ OpenBTS/OsmoBTS and Asterisk on Linux. Also, will need to setup OsmocomBB on the phone. Add a sysmousim developer SIM card in SIM reader, plugged into laptop, then write authentication w/ OsmocomBB ports. Then you can call other people, provided they're using OsmocomBB-compatible hardware and read instructions for flashing firmware on the SIM card for self-activation into your free open baseband 2G network. You can even run a computer network over GSM. You'll need a transport-agnostic GNUNet overlay but as a custom BBS scripted in Python w/ installation instructions on the website for how to set-up and connect to, provided they're within range of that tower. Then you name your company (say, Liberty Cellular). You can still make a 2G network even today, provided you have a part 5 experimental radio license from the FCC and took training courses. While implementing TDMA on FPGA (ULX3S) may be a significant engineering effort, you can still learn that in these FCC classes on how to script custom TDMA, et cetera.