Re: [dispatch] SIP and GSM/UMTS with OpenBTS

["Ralph A. Schmid, dk5ras" <[e-mail]>]

I see the purpose of such systems in not-so-developed countries, and
especially in very remote areas of those.

 

Usually the commercial providers have no interest in covering those, as
there is no revenue from doing so, and 

especially in such countries often the government is not willing to force
operators to cover an area, and/or they 

are not willing/able to enforce such a rule.

 

So imagine a village, a few hundred people living there, most of them owning
mobile phones for communication 

when they travel to the town for work or for trading goods - but at home
those phones are useless.

 

Now there are two possibilities - the government does not care about
licenses, or they give a license to operate 

a local network. This is not our problem here, we are techs, no bureaucrats.


 

So somebody is able to spent a few thousand dollars, puts an antenna onto
some tree, flips the switch, and 

a few hundred phones can (and do) log on. 

 

Very nice, people can call each other, can call the doctor when they are ill
and injured, the system runs locally 

just fine. 

 

Now more and more of those low-cost networks grow up, and people want to
connect them. Internet is available 

in some places, cheap to buy and install WiFi-links are established, the
whole thing evolves, some simple 

structure grows. 

 

This is the time were some standards are needed. Open standards, cheap
standards, not a 3GPP IMS monster. We 

are not talking here about a nice and clean data center with racks full of
BSCs, MSCs and all that, we are talking 

about simple to maintain structures. It must be some technology a normal
computer guy everywhere in the world 

can understand after reading some manuals. SIP family of procedures was
chosen.

 

As far as I understand (don't blame when I'm wrong, I'm RF engineer, not a
SIP guy) at the moment the possible  

procedures are not standardized, some extensions or modifications need to be
defined, for being able to cope 

with this kind of mobility (handover etc.) and distributed network control.
This is the scope of this mail thread.

 

Such systems like described above are not dreams, such systems do exist,
they bring a large benefit to those 

people, micro economics evolve, emergency communication is established,
social interaction is improved.

 

Now imagine an earthquake or a similar catastrophe - the almost non-existent
infrastructure breaks down 

completely. Emergency teams show up, have no oversight what is happening.
But hey, they unload some 

boxes on top of a hill, fire up their BTS, link it to the headquarter, many
phones log into the system, and 

people can call for assistance, can tell what kind of help is needed in what
place, first responder teams can 

be sent to those places.

 

 

No fancy and shiny business, just live saving communication somewhere out in
the mud and dirt. Normal 

phone companies do not do this kind of work, but someone needs to. IETF may
be a small gear that makes 

this thing move a bit smoother - it is already moving, that is for sure,
with or without IETF  :-)

 

But I may be wrong...then just hit the DEL-button.


Ralph.

 

 

 

 

From: dispatch [mailto:[e-mail]] On Behalf Of DRAGE, Keith
(Keith)
Sent: Thursday, February 13, 2014 3:34 PM
To: Harvind Samra; Ivo Sedlacek
Cc: [e-mail]
Subject: Re: [dispatch] SIP and GSM/UMTS with OpenBTS

 

Jumping in here, they are relevant in as much as there is no point in IETF
working on this if there is no known market for it.

 

Usually those type of projects are published only on April 1st.

 

So all Ivo is asking is for you to justify that it is worth other people
working on this as well as yourselves.

 

Perhaps if you identified the spectrum you believe is available for use in
the the countries identified, that would be useful.

 

regards

 

Keith Drage

 


  _____  


From: dispatch [mailto:[e-mail]] On Behalf Of Harvind Samra
Sent: 13 February 2014 12:37
To: Ivo Sedlacek
Cc: [e-mail]
Subject: Re: [dispatch] SIP and GSM/UMTS with OpenBTS

Hi Ivo, 

 

I have to ask.why are the questions regarding frequency licensing and
economics relevant?  This is a discussion regrading augmenting SIP.

 

On Feb 13, 2014, at 2:06 AM, Ivo Sedlacek <[e-mail]> wrote:





Hello Tim and all,


if I understood the proposal correctly, in comparison to 3GPP architecture
you propose:

- UEs are unchanged

- BTS

                - uses regular Um reference point towards UEs

                - has a new SIP based interface replacing ABis reference
point

- BSC, MSC, HSS, SM-SC, ... collapse into one functional entity
"SAS/Asterisk/SMQueue". This new functional entity:

                - uses the new SIP based interface replacing ABis reference
point towards BTS

                - uses another SIP based interface towards remote networks

Can you please clarify what's the intended business case where the proposed
solution is supposed to be superior over the existing 3GPP solution?

E.g. can you please clarify whether you indent to specify a solution for:

a) carriers with license to use the licensed GSM bands?

b) individuals/corporates without license to use the licensed GSM bands?

c) anyone else?

The original mail suggested b) but then you referred to a) in your mail
stating "But more typically carriers with spectrum licenses are looking for
an economical way to get into rural areas."

If a), such solution can be deployed anywhere where there are existing GSM
bands in use. However, it will likely require implementation of the full
3GPP feature set which carriers offer today, including supporting
regulator's requirements, support of handovers, integration with other
operator subsystems (e.g. billing, operation & maintenance subsystems, ...).
Or do you believe that some existing requirements are unnecessary for
deployments in carrier networks?

You seem to claim above that your proposal can be more economical than
existing solution. Given that new protocol would need to be defined and
functional entities newly developed and tested, I fail to see how this can
be more economical than deployment of existing products which are already
developed, tested, mass produced and mass deployed. Can you provide some
numbers supporting your view?

 
<https://www.usenix.org/conference/nsdi13/technical-sessions/presentation/he
imurl>
https://www.usenix.org/conference/nsdi13/technical-sessions/presentation/hei
murl just proposes new functionality to be added, unrelated to any potential
replacement of ABis reference point with SIP based interface.

If b), then such solution can be deployed only in countries where there is
no license needed. You list Sweden as one with UK and Netherlands with
question marks. Also Antarctica was mentioned.

Can you please provide a reference to regulators' document enabling usage of
GSM bands without license in each of those countries?

How will interferences be avoided if several individuals/corporates start
using the same GSM band in the same location, particularly if each starts
using power enabling "potential 20 mile radius even for a single cell"?

Furthermore, even if all of Sweden, UK, Netherlands and Antarctica enable
usage of GSM bands without license, this is still quite limited market. If
the solution is limited only to those countries, even if the required
feature set is smaller, there is little economies of scale.

Kind regards

Ivo Sedlacek

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Harvind Samra

Founder, CTO

Range Networks

San Francisco, CA  

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