Cellular Network Infrastructure

Today, sysmocom GmbH has announced the public availability of a set of freely available user manuals for a range of Osmocom software projects for operation of Free Software based cellular networks.

The sysmocom-created user manuals had so far been available only to customers of sysmocom GmbH, but are now made publicly available to all users of Osmocom software.

The release includes user manuals and VTY command line reference manuals for the OpenBSC flavors OsmoBSC and OsmoNITB, as well as OsmoBTS, OsmoPCU and OsmoSGSN.

Both PDF rendered versions, as well as the asciidoc source code is made available under the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL).

The PDF renderings of the latest version of the manuals are available from http://ftp.osmocom.org/docs/latest/, while the asciidoc source code is available from http://git.osmocom.org/osmo-gsm-manuals/. The PDF versions are also linked directly from the respective project wiki pages on http://projects.osmocom.org/

Rhizomatica Hackathon in Oaxaca, Mexico¶

Rhizomatica's goal is to increase access to mobile telecommunications to people without (affordable) coverage. This is done by helping people build and manage their own networks. Currently 16 villages around Oaxaca that have no regular GSM coverage are operating their own GSM network.

Those installations are using the Osmocom Open Source software stack including OsmoBTS and OpenBSC's OsmoNITB.

The recent hackathon by Rhizomatica brought together many different parties involved in community cellular networks from around Oaxaca as well as Nicaragua and Brazil. For this occasion Osmocom project member Daniel was asked to attend in order to hold a workshop on OpenBSC as well as help with problems setting up networks throughout the hackathon. The results were demo sites being successfully set up as well as discussions on future improvements.

During the hackathon, one of the deployments in a village was visited, providing opportunity not only to have a look at the installation, but also to talk to the municipal government operating the network.

Seeing the software we constantly improve being used to bring remote communities closer together was very uplifting.

We hope for many more such deployments, where Open Source Mobile Communications software is used to make a real difference by providing affordable telecommunications services.

For more information about Rhizomatica, see http://rhizomatica.org/