How Egypt Switched Off The Internet

Re:How Egypt Switched Off The Internet by Swannie on Friday January 28, 2011 @02:22PM (#2153131)

Good idea, sadly OpenBTS being 1/10 the cost of existing infrastructure, still makes it (ballpark figure) $5k to operate something like the BurningMan 1 BTS network (so cheap in the telco world! Ohh, I'm not considering the power system in that figure).

Sure, GSM is ubiquitous, but WiFi is getting there and more commoditized. (Completely O.T. but I find the lack of people hacking their HP printers with WiFi in, quite a lack!)

We get closer and closer to a William Gibson-esque world all the time.

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[deleted]

Re:How Egypt Switched Off The Internet by stcredzero on Friday January 28, 2011 @08:09PM (#2154197)

What about a bargain version of cellular which only handles SMS? Is this possible? This would still be valuable to activists in a situation like this.

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Re:How Egypt Switched Off The Internet by stcredzero on Friday January 28, 2011 @08:11PM (#2154202)

Good idea, sadly OpenBTS being 1/10 the cost of existing infrastructure, still makes it (ballpark figure) $5k to operate something like the BurningMan 1 BTS network

This is well within the budget for a well publicized Kickstarter campaign. Just a dozen of those in the capital city for 1 week would be extremely valuable.

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