from Hacker News

Vodafone unveils prototype 5G network built on a Raspberry Pi computer

by rchaudhary on 2/28/23, 10:37 PM with 106 comments

• by AceJohnny2 on 3/1/23, 12:19 AM

  > and an equally small, advanced silicon chipset.

  That's like the old cartoon joke: "Thinking quickly, Dave [the Barbarian] constructs a homemade megaphone, using only some string, a squirrel, and a megaphone."

  The RasPi is incidental to the complexity of the system. Methinks they only used that for the headline attention. Success!

• by eloy on 2/28/23, 11:23 PM

  Funny how Vodafone manages to write an entire article about a femtocell they built without using that word a single time.

• by polalavik on 2/28/23, 10:54 PM

  > Vodafone is now looking at ways to democratise MPNs and extend their benefits to micro and small business owners whilst lowering the entry cost and reducing the resources needed to experience new digital services

  oh like... maybe making it open source? Or democratization as in "sell as many as possible"?

• by ariendj on 2/28/23, 10:59 PM

  I hope they really push this concept and sell the hardware at a loss. A lime micro SDR with a raspberry pi in a box is a radio hacker's dream come true.

• by ggm on 2/28/23, 11:03 PM

  Vodafone move to occupy the radio frequency spectrum by co-opting the builder/maker culture, but actually don't care about that as much as the future revenue potential in visibly using 5G frequencies so the regulator has to acknowledge 'prior occupancy' when deciding frequency collision issues in the market.

• by andrewstuart on 2/28/23, 11:51 PM

  This is the reason why you can't get a Raspberry Pi computer.

  Eben Upton, (Raspberry Pi Founder) sold out his his base.

  When the chip shortage hit, Upton made the decision to prioritise supply to industrial buyers over retail/hobbyists/education.

  His rationale was that companies that had bills to pay and salaries to pay should get priority because people's livelihoods depended on getting those Raspberry Pi's. Sounds good. But years down the track, nothing changed. What should have happened is that Upton should have given the industrial buyers a six months warning to find other ways to build their products instead of Raspberry Pi. That never happened. Instead, Raspberry Pi simply turned into a dedicated industrial computing supplier. Businesses have the means and the expertise to redesign their products around different computing technology - they did not need a blanket commitment forever from Raspberry Pi to support their technology directions.

  The outcome of this decision has been that Raspberry Pi and Eben Upton have sold out the community that got Raspberry pi to where it is.

  He sold out the kids and the schools and sold out the hobbyists.

  I think that in the Covid time, if anything, he should have prioritised schools and children. When they were sitting at home in lockdown they could have been learning computing with a Raspberry Pi.

  So its now years down the track and nothing has changed. You can't get a Raspberry Pi because they are sold to industrial buyers like Vodafone.

  Raspberry Pi's loyal community and especially the kids and the schools deserved better than being sold out.

  There's lots of alternatives to Raspberry Pi - give them your loyalty and your money.... here's some:

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8clrUclPIs

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGcWLgAk5kA

• by borland on 2/28/23, 11:10 PM

  Isn't this just "Now you can pay to purchase and operate hardware to compensate for our crappy coverage, so we don't have to improve it ourselves?"

• by atlgator on 2/28/23, 11:38 PM

  Isn't this just a femtocell with off-the-shelf hardware inside?

• by foobarbecue on 2/28/23, 11:31 PM

  So that's where all the Pis went then I guess.

• by secondcoming on 2/28/23, 11:13 PM

  What's the benefit over a normal 5G router? I'd imagine SDR is somewhat power hungry, not ideal in the current energy climate in some countries.

  I did try using a bog-standard 5G mobile phone as a dedicated hotspot, but there's quite a speed drop so I assume Android isn't optimised at all for this use-case, which is a shame since 5G routers are essentially stripped down mobile phones.

  Huawei seem to dominate the 5G router space (I have one as they were the only ones supplying one at the time I needed one), Nokia have a 'Fast Mile' offering but it seems it's not for the end consumer. They're missing a trick here IMO.

  I also would be very reluctant to use equipment from an MNO, epecially since they all seem to be onboard with TrustPid [0] for marketing purposes bullshit.

  [0] https://www.trustpid.com/

• by hinkley on 2/28/23, 10:59 PM

  If we could get an off the shelf SOC that's powerful enough to manage a PCIe daughter card, that would make me so happy.

  Software defined radio, offloaded eBPF, RAID controllers, are just the most obvious compute peripherals but there are a million others that could exist but don't.

  edit: acronym typo

• by jsmith99 on 3/1/23, 12:27 AM

  For certain industrial uses or to cover large areas I see the benefit of private 5g networks, but for home/SMB (the apparent target) didn't femtocells dissapear years ago because they were killed off by WiFi calling? This seems to be a solved problem.

• by Quillbert182 on 2/28/23, 11:35 PM

  So that's where they all went.

• by smcl on 2/28/23, 11:41 PM

  Ok this is cool but maybe Vodafone can focus on more customer-oriented things like figuring out how I can pay them the -7000 CZK they've been harassing me about for 2 months. Effectively I overpaid last year (due to their billing stupidity) and now they've been threatening to disconnect if I don't pay them minus US$315-ish. I don't quite know how to do that legally...

  Stupid company.

• by metadat on 3/1/23, 1:54 AM

  Would this be plugged into your home Internet link, or what is the backhaul connection comprised of?

• by rektide on 3/1/23, 2:03 AM

  Someone do wifi next! I cant wait for a good option for assembling APs from parts.

• by bit604 on 3/1/23, 12:37 AM

  Why would you connect to this type of router over a WiFi router?

• by synergy20 on 3/1/23, 12:36 AM

  a longer range high speed wifi that is.

  it also can be used to hijack your calls and sms based 2FA in a drive-by car in no time.