Question for radio experts

[Shankapotomus]

Last edited Wed Apr 11, 2012, 01:19 PM - Edit history (1)

You know how most radio is free to anyone that has a radio receiver?

Well, is it possible to transmit text messages for free over the same band width if a "textual radio" was invented?

My thinking behind this is an idea of a sort of alternate free Internet that is not connected to the paid one we use now.

Obviously, if it can work, everyone would have to have to ability to both receive and transmit. And it would basically be a kind of free local (within a few states) Internet, not a world wide connection, unless we used long range radio technology...is that called short wave? I don't know much about radio.

Can it work?
EDIT: Found a Packet radio demonstration. Oddly, it looks eerily similar to the internet in its infancy. Anyone think this technology is being neglected because it's a free way to communicate no one can put a monthly price tag on?:

[Shankapotomus]

1. Never mind. Found the answer.

The short answer is no.

[Fumesucker]

2. Netsukuku is one effort to do such a thing..

http://www.masternewmedia.org/the-alternative-p2p-wireless-internet-network-the-netsukuku-idea/

[SamG]

3. What you are describing is precisely what

cell phones are and what smart cell phones do. Cell phones use radio waves to digitally send and receive voice text and other information.

Obviously, they are not free! Sprint, Verizon, and all the rest of the cell phone companies charge lots of money and make lots of money on their rights to use those radio frequencies for digital communicaiton.

There are some technical differences in how the radio waves are used as opposed to AM or FM or old style TV signals.

Regular home and car and portable radios, (AM and FM) are analog signals, not digital. These days, much of the radio frequency spectrum has been set aside for digital signals, not analog.

TV signals (video and audio) these days are more similar to cell phones in that they are also digital signals, (not analog, as they used to be a few years back). Transitioning from analog to digital signals for TV channnels meant they are more compressed, (take up less space in the broad range of radio frequencies available). That freed up space for more cell phones, more emergency communications (police fire, etc), and rights to some of those frequencies used by cell phone and other providers were "auctioned off" from the feds to companies like Sprint, Verizon, whatever. (There are also still some unassigned frequencies for digital communications, I believe, that have not yet been "auctioned off", and are being reserved for either government, law enforcement, military, or other public purposes or for later auctioning.)

A smart cell phone, with web and text features is exactly what that "alternate internet" is.

[Fumesucker]

5. Cell phones aren't peer to peer..

I had read the OP to mean a peer to peer type of network, like the amateur radio net described by another poster.

[SamG]

8. You have a point BUT....What part of text messaging is NOT "peer to peer"?

The only reason we don't share files from one cell phone to another, (actually we do, photos, emails, text messages), but the ONLY reason for this limitation upon fully open "peer to peer" is the cell phone operating system, NOT the technology of using radio waves to transmit digital voice, video, and information.

[Fumesucker]

9. The cell phones all connect to a tower..

Cell phones aren't really designed to connect to each other and require extensive infrastructure in the form of towers fairly close together.

Wifi is different, it's designed to connect to each other rather than a central tower and some units are easy to reprogram, I have two Linksys routers running DD-WRT (a custom Linux based embedded OS) on them that kind of makes a "swiss army knife" of wifi.. The unit can be either router or client or even both at the same time in repeater mode..

With a decent antenna on the roof I've been able to pick up dozens of wifi signals at the same time and I'm not in a particularly dense area for wifi, the things are everywhere now.. Take the existing wifi systems and network them all together in a completely p2p manner and you could pass a message from one side of the world to the other and it never go over any central network at all, completely distributed..

http://www.dd-wrt.com/site/index

[SamG]

10. So you agree with me, it's the operating system in the cell phones

that limit what they can contact. All cell phones send and receive digital radio waves, it's just a function of which radio waves one cell phone can "see" and connect to, limited by the operating system, (the ports it is open to). Actually I have sent and received pictures from a fellow cell phone, through Bluetooth, without a wifi connection, without a cell tower involved.

Not sure what your point is, other than that the cell phone operating system and digital transmission frequency is limited by the cell phone's OS itself.

[Fumesucker]

11. Bluetooth is a very short range link, a matter of a few yards, extremely low powered.

I don't know that the OS is the only problem with cell phones, the hardware is not designed for phones to communicate directly with each other except through something like bluetooth.

Most of the "intelligence" in a cell network is not in the phones themselves but rather resides in the physical infrastructure, the towers and the network that connects them.

The OP was looking for a free network, you're not going to easily get that out of the current cell phone technology except possibly through the Wifi which is a secondary function and not available on all phones.

My point is that there's an already widely deployed technology, Wifi, that is designed specifically to communicate directly p2p, it's usually easier to adapt something that's closer to the desired end result than it is to try and hack a technology that is less close.

Even little things like external antennas with gain are relatively common for Wifi and about unknown for cell phones, in a low powered p2p environment that's going to make a major difference. With antennas it's like engines and speakers, all else being equal there really is no substitute for size, you aren't going to fill an amphitheater with concert level sound from something the size of a soap bar no matter how much power you push into it.

If you wanted to hack a street vehicle into a bulldozer it would be better to start with an F350 than a Ferrari, the F350 is designed for something closer to the final purpose.

[bananas]

4. They used to do that with ham radio.

edit to add some links:

They still do that with ham radio:
"The AMPRNet (AMateur Packet Radio Network) is a name used by amateur radio operators for computer networks connected over amateur radio."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMPRNet

"Ethernet was developed at Xerox PARC between 1973 and 1974.[1][2] It was inspired by ALOHAnet, which Robert Metcalfe had studied as part of his PhD dissertation."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethernet

"ALOHAnet became operational in June, 1971, providing the first public demonstration of a wireless packet data network."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ALOHAnet

"Professor Norman Abramson of the University of Hawaii developed a packet radio network known as ALOHAnet and performed a number of experiments around 1970 to develop methods to arbitrate access to a shared radio channel by network nodes. This system operated on UHF frequencies at 9600 baud. From this work the Aloha multiple access protocol was derived. Subsequent enhancements in channel access techniques made by Leonard Kleinrock et al in 1975 would lead Robert Metcalfe to use carrier sense multiple access (CSMA) protocols in the design of the now commonplace Ethernet local area network (LAN) technology."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Packet_radio

[TexasProgresive]

6. +1

My son is a ham operator and he just attended a talk on texting using ham radio.

The problem with it is that one must be licensed, own the equipment and have enough others to form a network. Most of the hams these days seemed to be old white teabag types at least in our area.

[Shankapotomus]

7. Yes, Packet radio

This is what I'm talking about. I wonder if there is anyway to modernize it, scale it down and put it in the hands of everyone?

[bananas]

12. Community wifi

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_community_network

http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/community-wifi-its-a-digital-day-for-the-neighborhood/2012/03/29/gIQAMIYZlS_story.html

[bananas]

13. There are other projects designed to make a wifi mesh with cell phones

http://www.psfk.com/2010/07/cell_phone_network_that_doesnt_need_towers.html

http://www.itnews.com.au/News/157220,researchers-developing-free-mobile-mesh-network.aspx

http://mobile.slashdot.org/story/09/10/01/202210/a-mobile-phone-mesh-that-can-survive-carrier-network-failure

http://phys.org/news/2011-01-thwarting-cell-mesh-networks.html