Ham Radio / Off-grid communication

Obfuscous said:
Honest question, is a Nokia off the grid?
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Like, a cell phone? What do you mean exactly?

If the question is if the old ones are off the network, mostly yes, depending on where you are. 2G services are pretty much gone in most places people will be posting from.

I was reading the other day that the 'SMS blasters' that the chinks have been trying to deploy in Canada rely on modern phones having 2G enabled, doing a 4G handshake then downgrading to take advantage of old GSM encryption flaws. So it still has to be going somewhere.

If you mean it in a 'is this useful off grid communication' then for the most part lol no, cell networks are heavily monitored and probably pretty easy to take down. You could run your own GSM stations, people have software out there to do that, but then you'd be sharing a band with people who have radio towers to DF you all over the place and a financial incentive to get you busted.
 
Mikoyan said:
Like, a cell phone? What do you mean exactly?

If the question is if the old ones are off the network, mostly yes, depending on where you are. 2G services are pretty much gone in most places people will be posting from.

I was reading the other day that the 'SMS blasters' that the chinks have been trying to deploy in Canada rely on modern phones having 2G enabled, doing a 4G handshake then downgrading to take advantage of old GSM encryption flaws. So it still has to be going somewhere.

If you mean it in a 'is this useful off grid communication' then for the most part lol no, cell networks are heavily monitored and probably pretty easy to take down. You could run your own GSM stations, people have software out there to do that, but then you'd be sharing a band with people who have radio towers to DF you all over the place and a financial incentive to get you busted.
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Now I regret asking my question. Sorry for wasting your time.
 
There are some projects which let you run an open mobile network (like 2G GSM) but these require a lot of paperwork and (i think) almost everyone except for the official devs are running them illegally. Getting older mobile phones to work is feasible with older 1G tech like C-Netz, but that is pretty limited in terms of available radios.

I would not be surprised if the chinks were using these open source projects and some SDRs, did canuck police publish any photos of their equipment by chance? Im curious about it because another option is that they were using decomissioned professional 2G/3G GSM equipment, there is plenty of it being recycled in China recently.
 
The picture in the most common article is from a previous UK bust. It's all boxed up in rack cases and other stuff but my general opinion is 'probably not real gear', since that stuff is usually pretty big (or was when I worked with IS-136 radios) and mostly because it'd be straight up easier just to SDR all this stuff. Real gear isn't going to like the weird exploits these guys are pulling.

And really has anyone, ever gotten official permission for their little play 2G networks?
 
PsyopDuck said:
I got my Technician license years ago, but never did anything with it.

Any suggestions on how to re-learn and get started? I'm currently not able to place an antenna where I live.

Edit: Clarity
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If you're in a reasonably populated area, you might be able to hit a repeater with just an HT. Check Repeaterbook or look up your regional ham frequency coordinator group for a more authoritative reference. If you don't have a repeater you can hit, or the local repeaters are dead, you can buy a hotspot, basically a mini-repeater that connects you to Internet-linked systems.
 
Ill said:
A startup called ukama tried to sell diy kits but it seems not to have gone anywhere
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In the past they sold full 4G LTE base stations at around $800

It's a really neat idea though. But for something achievable on the community / hobbyist level I just don't think it's doable.

While not interoperable with a regular phone and not nearly the same throughput, I really like the idea of 2.4 GHz LoRa. There is a vast array of low cost, low power consumption hardware based on either the SX1280 or the LR1121. The 2.4 GHz band is extremely noisy in urban environments but LoRa can punch through it really well.

You would then just slap a small LoRa modem inside a phone case or something
 
I made a post a few months back about homebrewing a filter for my CB. Turns out the constant k filter I came up with has component values too small to physically realize. Something feels wrong because these filters are fairly easy/common. I will do some more research on the topic, I'm probably just retarded.
 
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