Thanks Paul for pointing to this Softbank's press release. Japanese have recently witnessed their local need for civil emergency communications and they also have money to make it happen, not to mention good supporting infrastructure already in place. So it was just matter of time to see someone there addressing this problem. I guess in Japan there is no such earthquake that could compromise the functionality of their mobile core (or at least locals think so). So it is then "just" matter of deploying new balloon-basestations to the disaster area. Someone will go there to the washed-out area with all the required gear, and raise a new BTS-balloon every 3km. On poor countries it will remain as a different story however. it would be interesting to see what kind is that Softbank Mobile's Balloon-BTS proof of concept. I do not know about Softbank but I just directly assume that an operator do not have their own BTS R&D. They must be relying on some existing technology and just make it fly with the balloon. Keeping in mind that one weather sounding balloon can raise 500g payload and probably they will need to feed the power via some sort of cable from the ground level up to the high. So very interesting to follow-up how this all will be implemented in practice. Best Wishes, - Kalle

---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Paul Dart <pauldart@gmail.com> To: baseband-devel@lists.osmocom.org Cc: Date: Fri, 18 May 2012 09:24:18 +0100 Subject: Re: The SMOS project / 72h civil emergency communications system On 17 May 2012 08:17, Alexander Chemeris <alexander.chemeris@gmail.com> wrote:

...

Have you thought about using a balloon for carrying a BTS instead of dropping to a ground? This would give you much better coverage easily then on-the-ground installation.

http://www.cellular-news.com/story/54354.php?s=h

It appears Softbank Mobile have!

(also I emailed the OP about Telecom Sans Frontier http://www.tsfi.org )

Good luck,

Paul