This is absolute genius. There may not be the best signal quality, but it would be invaluable. If we could build this technology then there wouldn't even need to be a need to commercialize it, just to sell it. I think this type of low-cost service is just what cellphone companies need.

It's a great idea. I'm just not sure how it would work technically.

A whole new world of hacking and scorching!
As if the Low Life Community can't do enough harm with simple Blue Tooth and WiFi, this idea would provide access directly from the Network Signal.
It would, of course, sap the performance of the mobile 'phone providing the 'onward service'.
This would have to be hideously robust and security patched to the eyevballs to work safely.
Still, where there's a will, there's a way.
Best of luck with the idea.

I'm just wondering what carrier technology you would use to connect to the phone providing the onward service, blue tooth, wifi? If you are relying on these then the range is going to be limited. Wouldn't be easier to walk out into the hall where there is reception?

I've worked in the Cell Pone industry for a number of years and network coverage and quality improvement is a high priority for most operators and there will come a point where their coverage will mean almost no dropped calls and universal coverage (a way off but it will happen) in which case this would be redundant.

Different idea but what sprang to mind after reading the pitch, how about a peer-to-peer system aimed at mobile content, e.g. ring tones, mobile games, video clips etc. Loads of people have this content on their phones so why not share them the same way episodes of Lost and microsoft products are on torrent sites?

Brill !!!!!

I've thought about this idea before - I live in Tokyo and wonder what's going to happen when a big Earthquake knocks out the towers. A P2P network would save lives and solve a lot of problems. Your customer is the network provider - it's a huge sales differentiator.

I think the security issues would be significant, but I can't see why you couldn't use the existing wireless technology - you wouldn't need WiFi or Bluetooth - just a FON style split between private and public network.

You would be draining other people's batteries though. In an emergency, that might not be too difficult to live with (the convenience stores all sell plug-in batteries here) but for regular day to day use, many people would not allow this to happen.

I've talked about this idea before and someone told me they'd heard DoCoMo (part of NTT) were working on it. I haven't seen anything, but you might want to check that rumour out.

Good news

Great idea..

Bad news

It's not feasible until they get it approved by the FCC

See: http://gigaom.com/20...ite-space-broadband/

Great idea, but your "elevator pitch" is amiss.

people use ip phones nowadays that you can call from wifi if you dont have a line

skype is popular with the new phones

Yea can't say i like it.

I hate it when my batteryis low when i want ot make a call. let alone if someone esle has been using it.

This is a hot topic in Mobile Communications: Ad Hoc. It has a lot of technological issues and it is yet in the research phase, but it will sometime become available. I think just know there should be some sensor networks using it. For mobile, yet there is a long way.
One of the main problems is the great computational burden it will impose on mobile phones who work as a repeater. Other problems include signal interference, frequency management, bandwidth management, etc.

Nice try, but no cigar. You only have to do the math. Your GSM cell (or CDMA for that matter) can crank out maybe 1.5 W Rf PEP. That can make it to a cell tower because it has a huge antenna tower in high place and a much more sensitive receiver. I think the GSM spec says up to 10 Km but they may be pushing it to a cell site. Now if you try to connect directly with another cell phone with your small antenna and 1.5 Watts, you will be lucky to get 1-2 Km in a ground cluttered area. The receiving antenna on both cell phone units is much smaller, and do not have the transmit power levels available to the cell tower. If you had a dense enough ad-hoc network of cell phones (same type, same band etc) you may get something to work using mesh routing, but those phones would have to be powered on, registered somehow, and route multiple datastreams even while offline for the phone's owner (can you say 5 min battery life?)
Also imagine a routing node being obscurred (as in a tunnel, bridge or building) - all other traffic (probably not more than 2-3 other calls considering the limited bandwidth) would be cut off without warning. You'd be hard pressed to line up an alternate route and do a handoff before losing signal. A cell tower manages the tx signal strengths of all the phones with its cell - an ad hoc system would not have that advantage, forcing all nodes to tx at maximum power.

Ad hoc rf communications devices exist today- they are called walkie-talkies, or in their current incantation, GMRS.

There are literally billions of dollars being invested in new telecom technology. This is a hard market to enter. Its better to focus on the wireless applications side.

Very ambitious but makes sense to me...
But...(am not a technical savvy) MObile phone works like a transitor radio, at time even Cell site wont work if its not under "point of site" ...so i guess the idea seems an engineering question,even GSm connections would be technically useless without anchoring to canopeater installed above ground to make the P2P workbut again there will be a radius service question.
I may be wrong of course. THis is just my .02 opinion.

lovely!!!!!!!!!!!!

The principle is interesting.

But it's a no go for me also. People are already complaining about battery life and cellphone brain tumors.. I think this solution would just add to the problem.

Make a wifi or bluetooth network that can support phones with skype or other technologies... Now we are talking

]V[oogy

Wifi + skype etc.. = fucked telecoms companies

Right but Wifi is not everywhere, there is a cell phone everywhere. So why not piggy back off them?

i like it.

With some work, this could be similar to OLPC and their peer networks for kids. Negroponte might even chip in for this one.

I think I would want the option of opting in or opting out. I would also want to be paid for opting in if I'm going to spend my hard-earned battery power on other people's conversations.

I agree with TheGuru and ChrisJ. I don't think it's a money-maker.

Ooma is already doing this for land line phones and its free after you buy the hub. Plus they have a celebrity as creative director (Ashton Kutcher) and lots of funding.

Mobile would be the logical next step but long after landlines get working properly.

http://www.ooma.com/
Good interview by the people from techcrunch:
http://www.talkcrunc...-and-ashton-kutcher/

Nice one. Just life creating a Wifi hotspot out of your laptop. But need to address the security and battery issues.

You can get devices that act as repeaters for cell phone signals to help boost reception in low-signal areas. The ones I've seen are fairly expensive, but they work because they provide a high-power transmitter that can take the low-power signal from your phone and boost it enough to reach a distant cell. Obviously your plan would work if you could piggy-back across multiple phones, but I think TheGuru's comments need to be seriously addressed regarding power and routing.

Maybe you could accomplish a similar thing by providing some DIY method for creating a repeater that would let people set up nodes just like they set up public wifi hotspots.

Nice, i was thinking of this when driving. I came to the conclusion that it would only work well in cities. Still good though.

"Peer to Peer Cell Phones will link to each other and then to a cell tower. This means that if you are in a building and you don't get a signal but someone across the hall gets a signal you will be able to use his cellphone as a hub to connect to a cell phone tower"

Looks like a practical one but seems a crude backward technology than improving what is there.

I think it's a good idea, though i wonder about any privacy issues though. Not that there aren't any privacy issues now, but people can mod phone to do quite sophisticated things.

it would be like every mobile phone was be a wifi relay? brilliant!

Good idea - though I'm not sure it would be very secure with all of the signal hacking going on. How about using satellites? (The world is your network...)

Not to mention, some else using all my minutes....no thanks

Get a canopeater instead than asking some people's time to get signal!

Chicken-and-egg problem... only a body like FCC could get this off the ground in a way EVERYONE could use it. But it may be a mesh network could be added as a parallel service for an open source phone like...
http://www.openmoko.com/
...(since I really don't believe running a Java app on a cell phone would give you enough control to pull this off). But you'll never get enough adopters to make it practical.

You need high density support for the protocol for it to be of any value. For example if everyone in a particular community (say a university) was capable of participating, then it might be possible to launch without FCC/telco support.

Yeah this idea is a great one, but i have heard it in a million different variations for years now, it seems to be the the next logical step in cell phones, (aside from wifi/internet phones) and im sure someone somewhere with a lot of money and engineers will come up with it, but i don't know how likely it would be for any one person to get this idea off the ground.

"If" you could get the cell phones companies to buy of on the idea, what would be their incentive to use an outside company?

Kiss battery life good by. Instead of your cell sitting idle and consuming little poer, it will be routing other people's phone calls.....

..its not cooler than i thought. =(

I guess I should point out before I vote this idea down, that if there was such a phone/service I'd buy it. Totally needed (even if just for text messaging). Just about impossible to make happen.

Really Gord? I guess you are not aware of my red slippers that I can tap together three times and any idea I have comes true?

Is it bad to make fun of ones own idea?

Say goodby to calling security, now anyone can listen in on your calls ez. Well, they were never secure in the first place.

Anyways, cell phones are not setup as repeaters, and it would involve some work to do so just to get a standard system and hardware setup. I am not going to even other with the technical aspects. FCC regulations alone will grind you to a halt.

Also, lets say you were in a remote location (The only real need for repeaters). What is the use because there are not enough repeaters and if there were then it would all ready be covered by the towers anyways.

Cell phone towers are actually very cheep compared to how much they bring in they only cost about $100,000-$350,000 and a land lease of about $500 - $1500 per month and operational maintenance.

Gods_Light, I think IF it were possible to make this happen, it would probably be restricted to SMS type communication. Because its not as critically-real-time as voice. And while phone-tower communication would be primary, MESH would be suitable if the network is overloaded (or down due to disaster). That's how I see it possibly working in a practical fashion, with what I believe could be done technically.

BUT there's ZERO incentive for the phone manufacturers / carriers to let people do this. They want to bill you for every scrap of communications. Heck, they'd probably try bill you for MESH network traffic too if they could.

(I'm actually hoping someone reading this idea thread can suggest a solution to HOW this could be done.)

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