I don't remember the complete process, bit you can apply to the FCC for an
experimental lic from their website. You have to pay a fee (I think it was 50 or 100 USD)
and as long as you are power limited, I think they pretty much approve it for one year.
I can post the website link once I get back to the office.
*Sent from my iPhone 4
On Feb 17, 2011, at 12:25 PM, "Harald Welte" <laforge(a)gnumonks.org>
wrote:
Hi Jay,
On Thu, Feb 17, 2011 at 01:42:36PM +0100, Jay R. Worthington wrote:
as probably for most of us an official (testing)
licence is out of reach, is
there a "workaround" for this problem?
why do you think that? 'experimental license' != 'carrier license'.
We've obtained this in Germany, Austria, Switzerland and the Netherlands. So
at least in the EU it seems generally no problem
The fees we had to pay for those experimental/test licenses are typically < 300
EUR, so much cheaper than the equipment that you need to run the network
anyway.
From what I've heard about the US with regard to experimental licenses, they
have a similar situation (see how OpenBTS folks managed to get licenses for
their burining man tests).
- Is there some part of the official gsm bands
that overlaps with local ISM
or other not-so-tightly-regulated frequencies?
(i.e, GSM1900 seems to have a small part that's not used by DECT...)
This is a rumour. Only one of the uplink/downlink bands is in there, so you
will still need a test license. Also, AFAIK the DECT band is not everywhere
unlicensed for any kind of application, but actually restricted to be used with
the DECT system.
- Are there any "standard" gsm handsets
that could be modified (preferably
in software) to work at 2,4GHz?
no.
- Is UMA/GAN
(
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generic_Access_Network) something
that could be used with OpenBSC? As far as i understand the specification,
UMA is GSM Layer 3 over an GPRS/IPSEC tunnel to the BSC, so all the
GSM-Goodies should be there.
You would have to implemet a UMA gateway and somehow glue that to the layer3
inside OpenBSC. I don't think you can do it cleanly with the current code.
Later this year, once the new "real MSC" codebase emerges, this might be
easier.
Regards,
Harald
--
- Harald Welte <laforge(a)gnumonks.org>
http://laforge.gnumonks.org/
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