What's the real scope of hardware openness?

Giles Jones giles.jones at zen.co.uk
Mon Aug 6 13:46:27 CEST 2007


Luca Dionisi <luca.dionisi at gmail.com> wrote :

> Hi all,
> 
> I have a likely silly question.
> 
> I'm wondering why is it that in the mobile phone world there has
> not been a revolution similar to the P2P that we have seen in
> the internet,

> What's the real problem?

What you propose is illegal due to the restrictions on radio transmissions. There isn't really an unlicenced frequency band you can use for mobile phones. You would have to design a phone which uses wifi/wimax communication to talk to other phones and build up an adhoc cell network. 

The problem is you would be relying on someone near to you, if you were in a quiet area then one person's phone going offline would mean you would lose your connection.

Also, the power drain of having a radio transmitter (eg. Wifi) switched on all the time with an active would be huge. It just isn't going to happen anytime soon (IMHO).

---
G O Jones








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