Elon Musk's Space Internet Venture Could Link With Future Mars Colony

As reported by Hot Hardware: You have to hand it to Tony Stark, err, I mean Elon Musk. The man helped to co-found PayPal and he’s the CEO of Tesla Motors, which has brought us wonderful electric vehicles like the Roadster and the outrageous Model S P85D. Musk also helms SpaceX, which just recently made its fifth successful trip the International Space Station (ISS) to deliver supplies via the Dragon capsule. The secondary mission of the latest ISS launch resulted in the “successful failure” of the Falcon 9 rocket, which Musk described as a Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly (RUD) event.

And let’s not forget that Musk is also the chairman of SolarCity, which produces commercial- and consumer-grade solar panels. You would think that Musk already has enough on his plate, but you’d be dead wrong. In addition to his Hyperloop side project, Musk is eyeing a space-based Internet network that would be comprised of hundred of micro satellites orbiting roughly 750 miles above Earth.

Elon Musk with President Barack Obama (Source: NASA)

The so-called “Space Internet” would provide faster data speeds than traditional communications satellites that have a geosynchronous orbit of roughly 22,000 miles. “Our focus is on creating a global communications system that would be larger than anything that has been talked about to date,” said Musk. He hopes that the service will eventually grow to become “a giant global Internet service provider,” reaching over three billion people who are currently either without Internet service or only have access to low-speed connections.

And this wouldn’t be a Musk venture without reaching for some overly ambitious goal. The satellite network would truly become a “Space Internet” platform, as it would form the basis for a direct communications link between Earth and Mars. “I think this needs to be done, and I don’t see anyone else doing it,” Musk told Bloomberg Businessweek.

Elon Musk has his eyes set on a Mars colony. (Source: SpaceX)

Musk’s endgame is to help establish a colony on Mars and all of the pieces of the puzzle (including SpaceX’s rapidly-reusable Falcon rockets) are slowly coming together. "The reason SpaceX was created was to accelerate development of rocket technology, all for the goal of establishing a self-sustaining, permanent base on Mars," said Musk at the 33rd annual International Space Development Conference in May of last year. "And I think we're making some progress in that direction — not as fast as I'd like."

Space Internet would also help to fund Musk’s efforts to establish a colony on Mars; well, that and the half billion price tag for a private citizen to make the trip according to his calculations.

WiGig: A Speedy Wireless Protocol Is Coming to Many Gadgets in 2015

As reported by MIT Technology Review: Smartphones, tablets and PCs should appear this year that can send and receive data wirelessly more than 10 times faster than a Wi-Fi connection. As well as transferring videos and other large files in a flash, this could do away with the cables used to hook PCs up to displays or projectors.

The wireless technology that will allow this is known as 60 gigahertz—after the radio frequency it uses—and by the name “WiGig.” Computing giants including Apple, Microsoft, and Sony have quietly collaborated on the new standard for years, and a handful of products featuring WiGig are already available. But the technology will get a big push this year, with several companies bringing products featuring WiGig to market.

WiGig carries data much faster than Wi-Fi because its higher frequency radio signal can be used to encode more information. The maximum speed of a wireless channel using the current 60 gigahertz protocol is seven gigabits per second (in perfect conditions). That compares to the 433 megabits per second possible via a single channel made using the most advanced Wi-Fi protocol in use today, which transmits at five megahertz. Most Wi-Fi networks use less advanced technology that operates even slower.

Qualcomm, a leading maker of mobile device processors and wireless chips, has invested heavily in WiGig. At the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this month, the company demonstrated a wireless router for home or office use with the technology built in. That device will go on sale by the end of 2015.

Qualcomm has also designed the latest in its line of Snapdragon mobile processors to support WiGig. The “reference designs” Qualcomm shows to customers include its 60-gigahertz wireless chips, and the first devices built using the Snapdragon 810 processor are expected to go on sale in mid-2015. At CES, Qualcomm showed tablets built with that processor using WiGig to transfer video.

Mark Grodzinsky, a director of product management at Qualcomm, says WiGig technology should be much more reliable than Wi-Fi. As well as reducing congestion by providing a fresh chunk of airwaves to use, WiGig suffers less interference because it is directional. Whereas Wi-Fi devices blast their signal in all directions, WiGig ones use an array of tens of tiny antennas to point a beam toward the device they are connecting to.

“You’re not dirtying the air around you,” says Grodzinsky. “You could have a bunch of them in the same room and they would not interfere with each other.”

Those working on WiGig technology predict that demand for high definition video will make the technology necessary. The latest smartphones now record video at extremely high resolution. Grodzinsky says WiGig will start appearing in set-top boxes, making it easier to stream content from mobile devices to high definition TVs, or upload it to the Internet. Qualcomm calculates that its WiGig technology will make it possible to transfer a full-length HD movie in just three minutes.

The 60-gigahertz signals also have some disadvantages compared to Wi-Fi. They are blocked by walls, ceilings, and floors (although they can be picked up after bouncing off obstructions). This means they can generally only be used between devices in the same room.

Besides Qualcomm, Intel is preparing its own WiGig technology, and the company said at its annual developer conference last summer that WiGig chips would appear in laptops in 2015. In demos then and at CES this month, Intel showed a laptop using WiGig to connect with displays and other peripheral devices.

Samsung also expects to launch WiGig products this year. The company announced late in 2014 that it had developed its own implementation, and said it expected to commercialize it in 2015. The technology will appear in Samsung’s mobile, health-care, and smart home products.

The technology could eventually be used to extend the capacity of cellular networks. Last year, researchers led by Heather Zheng at the University of California, Santa Barbara, showed that the frequency can provide high-speed links at distances of 100 meters or more outdoors. “I think there’s real potential in certain deployments like a busy intersection or a shopping mall,” says Ben Zhao, a UCSB professor who worked on the project.

Zhao predicts that 60-gigahertz technology will find other uses as it becomes cheaper. He and Zheng worked with Google to test it as a way to replace some cables inside large data centers. They also found that a 60-gigahertz device can use its beam like a radar signal to detect the position and size of nearby objects.

The technology should also get faster. “Tens of gigabits per second will definitely happen within the next couple of years,” says Qualcomm’s Grodzinsky. “I think the spec will probably go upward of 100.”

Insurance Company Dongles Don't Offer Much Assurance Against Vehicle Hacking

As reported by Forbes: Corey Thuen has been braving the snow and sub-zero temperatures of Idaho nights in recent weeks, though any passerby would have been perplexed by a man, laptop in hand, tinkering with his aptly-named 2013 Toyota Tundra at such an ungodly hour.

He hasn’t been doing repairs, however. Quite the opposite. Thuen, a security researcher at Digital Bond Labs who will present his findings at the S4 conference in a talk titled Remote Control Automobiles, has been figuring out how he might hack the vehicle’s on-board network via a dongle that connects to the OBD2 port of his pickup truck. That little device, Snapshot, provided by one of the biggest insurance providers in the US, Progressive Insurance, is supposed to track his driving to determine whether he deserves to pay a little more or less for his cover. It’s used in more than two million vehicles in the US. But it’s wholly lacking in security, meaning it could be exploited to allow a hacker, be they in the car or outside, to take control over core vehicular functions, he claims.

It’s long been theorised that such usage-based insurance dongles, which are permeating the market apace, would be a viable attack vector. Thuen says he’s now proven those hypotheses; previous attacks via dongles either didn’t name the OBD2 devices or focused on another kind of technology, namely Zubie, which tracks the performance of vehicles for maintenance and safety purposes.

Corey Thuen messing with his Toyota in the middle of the night in Idaho

But he hasn’t gone as far to actually mess with the controls of his Toyota. By hooking up his laptop directly to the device he says he would have been able to unlock doors, start the car and gather engine information, but he chose not to “weaponise” his exploits, he told Forbes. “Controlling it wasn’t the focus, finding out if it was possible was the focus.” 

He started by extracting the firmware from the dongle, reverse engineering it and determining how to exploit it. It emerged the Snapshot technology, manufactured by Xirgo Technologies, was completely lacking in the security department, Thuen said. “The firmware running on the dongle is minimal and insecure. It does no validation or signing of firmware updates, no secure boot, no cellular authentication, no secure communications or encryption, no data execution prevention or attack mitigation technologies… basically it uses no security technologies whatsoever.” 

The researcher noted that for a remote attack to take place, the concomitant u-blox modem, which handles the connection between Progressive’s servers and the dongle, would have to be compromised too. Such systems have been exploited in the past, as noted in a paper here from Ralf-Philipp Weinmann, from the University of Luxembourg.

Corey Thuen’s Toyota, ready to be compromised

Regardless of the steps needed for a successful attack, it’s apparent such dongles are insecure, posing a genuine risk to people’s lives, Thuen added. “I suspected that these dongles were built insecurely, and I was correct. The technology being used in them is outdated and vulnerable to attack which is highly troubling considering it is being used to remotely access insecure by design vehicle computers,” he said. “A skilled attacker could almost certainly compromise such dongles to gain remote control of a vehicle, or even an entire fleet of vehicles. Once compromised, the consequences range from privacy data loss to life and limb.

“Also, there is the attack vector of Progressive backend infrastructure. If those systems are compromised, an attacker would have control over the devices that make it out to the field.
“In simple terms, we have seen that cars can be hacked and we have seen that cell comms can be hacked.”

Privacy of data within cars is also a growing concern, one highlighted by Thuen’s research. BMW this week said it had repeatedly been asked by technology companies and advertisers to hand over the data their cars generated, but it has refused to give in to those requests. Thuen said it would be possible to intercept data passed between the dongles and the insurance providers’ servers, likely including location and performance information, as they “do nothing to encrypt or otherwise protect the information they collect”.

Xirgo had not responded to Forbes requests for comment. Thuen said he’d tried to disclose his findings to Xirgo but got no response. Progressive said it hadn’t heard from Thuen, but handed this comment via email to Forbes: “The safety of our customers is paramount to us. We are confident in the performance of our Snapshot device – used in more than two million vehicles since 2008 – and routinely monitor the security of our device to help ensure customer safety.

“However, if an individual has credible evidence of a potential vulnerability related to our device, we would prefer that the person would first disclose that potential vulnerability to us so that we could evaluate it and, if necessary, correct it before the vulnerability could be exploited. While it’s unfortunate that Mr. Thuen didn’t share his findings with us privately in advance, we would welcome his confidential and detailed input so that we can properly evaluate his claims.”

The findings landed on the same day as the World Economic Forum’s Global Risks 2015 report warned about the increasing potential for digital attacks on cars. “There are more devices to secure against hackers, and bigger downsides from failure: hacking the location data on a car is merely an invasion of privacy, whereas hacking the control system of a car would be a threat to life. The current internet infrastructure was not developed with such security concerns in mind,” the report read.

One of the report’s contributors, John Drzik, president for global risk and specialties at insurance giant Marsh, told Forbes the insurance industry hasn’t quite grasped the problem of vehicular digital security.

Drzik said insurance companies could actually provide much of the impetus required to secure cars from hackers. They could, for instance, develop standards for being insured against such cyber risks or within the technologies, he added.

Black Hat: Global Terrorism and the Internet of Things (IoT)

As reported by the Daily Beast: Forget old techie movies. In Blackhat, the hacking is astoundingly accurate.

We’ve all seen hacker movies that feature utterly preposterous situations and technology. We’re looking at you, Hackers, Swordfish, and The Net.

But Blackhat, a high-tech Bourne-type thriller is surprising plausible, and seems almost rooted in reality.

The plot is fairly straightforward: formerly incarcerated Nick Hathaway (Chris Hemsworth) is pitted against a malicious hacker causing nuclear disasters, stock market crashes and other mayhem. If Hathaway catches this “blackhat” hacker, his criminal record is wiped. The chase is on, and it makes for an exciting movie.

The thing is: the situations described are very real, and even likely. Some of them have already happened.

SPOILER: Don’t read further if you want to stay away from movie details

SCADA Systems

In the movie, a malicious hacker (called a “blackhat”) infiltrates industrial computer systems and plants malware to take control of critical internal infrastructure. These systems are typically referred to as SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) systems, or industrial control systems, and they run everything. We’re talking power, water, oil, communications, manufacturing, transportation—basically everything that keeps our economy moving. In the real world, defending these industrial control systems is a major concern for U.S. security agencies.

At the start of the movie, the blackhat uses his malware to force a water pump failure at a nuclear power station. This results in a reactor meltdown. Sensational for sure, but how likely is it that something like this could happen? Well, something like it already has.

Stuxnet

In 2010, thousands of nuclear centrifuges at Iran’s Natanz uranium enrichment facility started to spin too quickly and were damaged, and the country’s nuclear enrichment program experienced significant setbacks. The cause behind the damage turned out to be a piece of custom-written malware named Stuxnet.

Just like inBlackhat, custom-written malware can be used to damage critical infrastructure.

Stuxnet was probably written by the United States or Israel. It likely spread to the Natanz computer network via an infected USB drive, and was written so that it would only deliver its payload if it was on a computer in Iran using variable-frequency drives that was running a specific type of industrial control software. This was software written for a very specific purpose—to slow down Iran’s ability to make a nuclear bomb.

Just like in Blackhat, custom-written malware can be used to damage critical infrastructure. It’s difficult and expensive to do, but it has happened. It’s also probable that these types of events will occur in the future.

And if you think we’ve got a handle on cyber security, you need only look at news reports of data breaches at Target, Home Depot, Adobe, JP Morgan Chase, Ebay, TJ Maxx, the U.S. military, or the 2014 Sony data breach—the largest hack in history—to know that the fight is ongoing.

Internet of Things

The vulnerability of industrial systems becomes even more concerning when you consider the Internet of Things. This is the idea that more “things” (like centrifuges, water pumps, heaters, air conditioners, eye glasses, watches, refrigerators, etc.) are going to have the ability to connect to networks. They’ll be able to send and receive data, receive updates and be remotely configured.

From a consumer’s perspective, this is great news! Everything will be smart, just like your phone. The great thing about smart phones, of course, is that they operate more like a pocket-sized computer than simply a telephone. The downside: they’re also a lot more vulnerable to malicious hackers.

Blackhat deals with larger threats to national security, but what if hackers decide to target individuals: What happens when your new smart car or smart house gets hacked?

No, all you luddites out there, the answer isn’t to abandon all technology and stick with “dumb” things. The answer is to build security into products (software with security in mind), behave more securely (why would you ever put a strange USB into your computer?), follow reasonable security advice like using strong passwords and support laws that strengthen the security of critical industrial systems.

The movie gives us a realistic look at the vast implications of cyber security threats—threats that are more real that most people probably realize. These could make the movie not so much a thriller but a horror film.

Falcon 9 Landing Turns Into "Unscheduled Disassembly" (Video)

As reported by Planetary Society and TechCrunch:  Genius futurist, entrepreneur and expert Twiterrer Elon Musk revealed some new information about SpaceX’s most recent reusable rocket landing attempt following the launch of its Dragon space capsule to resupply the International Space Station. In a conversation with John Carmack, formerly of ID and current VR software guru at Oculus, Musk shared still frames from SpaceX’s autonomous seafaring drone landing ship, which show the rocket’s RUD (rapid unscheduled disassembly) in spectacular glory.

Musk had previously revealed that the rocket landed hard, but despite its fantastic fireball, the test was actually a relative success for SpaceX’s efforts to recapture its first stage rocket for re-use. Explosions aren’t always signs of failure when you’re dealing with science, and in the case of spacefaring tech that’s even more true.

After posting the photos (and new SpaceX Vine, just added) above, Musk also reiterated that SpaceX will get another chance to test the landing and recovery capabilities of its reusable rockets and the autonomous barges it is using as mobile landing platforms in about two to three weeks’ time. With his trademark wry humour, he said the next test would involve “way more hydraulic fluid,” and that it “sh[ould] explode for a diff[erent] reason” at the very least. Failing for new reasons is basically the definition of scientific progress, is basically what he’s getting at.

Musk ended his flurry of tweets saying his motivation in posting the photos to Carmack is a desire to get the legendary programmer back into aerospace tech. Carmack founded Armadillo Aerospace back in 2000, with the aim of building suborbital space tourism spacecraft, but essentially shuttered the project in 2013, so Musk may be only half-kidding.

Elon Musk Plans to Build Hyperloop Test Track in Texas

As reported by CNET: Billionaire and entrepreneur Elon Musk is getting more hands-on with the Hyperloop.

Musk, who heads up both space transportation outfit SpaceX and electric-vehicle maker Tesla Motors, casually announced via Twitter on Thursday that he's decided to help accelerate development of his vision for near-supersonic tube transportation, first outlined in August 2013.

Musk said he will build a five-mile test track for the still-theoretical system for students and companies to use. A possible location would be Texas, he added, where presumably there is plenty of flat land to go around.

Musk originally floated the idea of the Hyperloop with help from fellow SpaceX and Tesla engineers, releasing their collective work in a 57-page concept paper that generated headlines worldwide. Until today, Musk has been notably hands-off about the project and has said it remains an open-source and collaborative process. SpaceX declined to comment further on Musk's plans or whether the test track will involve additional collaboration from members of his two companies.

Musk is known for dropping bombshell announcements on his personal Twitter account, like when a rocket from his space transportation outfit SpaceX exploded mid-flight because "rockets are tricky" or how he thinks artificial intelligence may be more dangerous than nukes.
Though Musk speaks of the Hyperloop with similar nonchalance, the idea could revolutionize land transportation. It's simpler than it sounds. A Hyperloop would work similarly to an air hockey table, but instead of floating on a cushion of air, solar-powered electromagnetic pulses would propel pressurized cabins inside elevated tubes.

Theoretically, the resulting system could reach speeds approaching 800 mph, faster than the speed of sound, through tubes held up by pylons placed between strategic cities like San Francisco and Los Angeles. The system still needs years of testing, and as much as $10 billion to create even just one 400-mile stretch.


Yet Musk's willingness to get involved after almost a year and a half of silence on the subject shows he's serious about the idea and will, as he has with his other ventures, spend some of his own money to get it off the ground.

Musk is known for taking risks and transforming industries. He did it with mobile payments and PayPal during the first dot-com era -- then again with electric vehicles and private spaceflight.
Critics, including members of the US High Speed Rail Association, say high-speed rail is a more-viable option. High-speed rail is widely used throughout Asia, and the state of California this month broke ground for its high-speed rail system costing $70 billion. Musk has criticized the project's high costs and sees the Hyperloop as leapfrogging the technology.

Musk isn't alone in trying to make the idea a reality. A group of entrepreneurs and scientists have banded together to create Hyperloop Transportation Technologies. Put together first on a crowdfunding platform called JumpStartFund, it's a collective of around 100 engineers, unaffiliated with Musk, who exchange free time for potential equity. Each works in small teams focused on specific interests, such as designing passenger pods and propulsion prototypes.
Hyperloop Transportation Technologies has also partnered with UCLA's SupraStudio design and architecture program to design capsules and stations, as well as work out prospective routes around the country that could potentially be linked into a nationwide Hyperloop network.

JumpStartFund refused to comment on Musk's plans, but CEO Dirk Ahlborn said the company will know soon where a finalized test site will be located.

Where Cellular Networks Don’t Exist, People Are Building Their Own

As reported by Wired: Inside the cloud that is perpetually draped over the small town of San Juan Yaee, Oaxaca, Raúl Hernández Santiago crouches down on the roof of the town hall and starts drilling. Men wearing rain gear of various impermeabilities cluster above him, holding a 4-meter-tall tower in place. Braided wires trail from four small circles welded near its midpoint; eventually those will be bolted or tied down in order to hold the tower steady during the frequent storms that roll through this part of Mexico’s Sierra Juárez mountains.

They don’t want it falling over every time it rains. Ninety thousand of the town’s pesos—a bit over $6,000—are invested in the equipment lashed to the top of the tower, in a town where many residents get by on subsistence agriculture.

The tower—which Hernández, Yaee’s blacksmith, welded
together out of scrap metal just a few hours earlier—is
the backbone of Yaee’s first cellular network.

 The 90,000 pesos come in the form of two antennas and an open-source base station from a Canadian company called NuRAN. Once Hernández and company get the tower installed and the network online, Yaee’s 500 citizens will, for the first time, be able to make cell phone calls from home, and for cheaper rates than almost anywhere else in Mexico.

Rhizomatica’s Peter Bloom helped make sure the tower could support a base station and an antenna.  Strategically ignored by Mexico’s major telecoms, Yaee is putting itself on the mobile communications grid with the help of a Oaxaca-based telecommunications non-profit called Rhizomatica. Its founder, Peter Bloom, is among the men currently getting soaked on the roof of town hall. It’s May of 2014, and this is the third of what he jokingly calls “artisanal cell phone installations” that he’s led in the Sierra Juárez in the past year and a half—the first of their kind in the world.

By the end of the year, he will have installed six more networks all over the state of Oaxaca, bringing the total to nine. Armed with an experimental concession from the Mexican government that grants Rhizomatica access to coveted cellular spectrum all over the country, Bloom is slowly but surely bringing coverage to towns that have been left out of the 21st century’s most important technological revolution.

Too small for profit

Of the world’s 7 billion or so cell phones, a few hundred of them are already in Yaee—they’re just not connected to a network. Kids use them as cameras and mp3 players, and Hernández, like many adults, bought his to use in Oaxaca City, a seven-hour bus ride away.

When he’s there, his cell phone can connect to plenty of base stations, which, in turn, link him to his choice of commercial network. But back in Yaee, there are no base stations and therefore no network. Every time Hernández wants to make a call in his hometown, he hikes for 20 minutes to the top of the highest hill around and hopes to catch some signal trickling in from a faraway base station, installed in a place deemed more profitable for telecoms than small towns like Yaee.

Raúl Hernández, el herrero de Yaee, construyó en su taller la torre hecha de chatarra.  Lizzie Wade

We’ve all heard plenty of uplifting stories of the democratizing potential of cell phones, how they’ve brought everything from voice calls to mobile banking to people who have never had access to landlines and laptops. Cell phones “have definitely proven the most ubiquitous piece of communication and digital hardware that people own on earth,” says Bloom. But on its own, “your cell phone doesn’t really know how to do anything,” he explains. All of the utility is in the network. And by and large, that network is provided—and, therefore, controlled—by a company that wants to make a profit.

That profit comes from subscribers, and if there aren’t enough of them in a particular region, cellular providers simply refuse to install their infrastructure there. Some countries get around that economic reality by legally requiring telecom companies to build networks in rural areas, no matter how many people end up paying for a contract. Mexico doesn’t have any such laws, meaning that Yaee, with its 500 residents, doesn’t stand a chance of attracting a commercial provider.

To make things worse, Mexico’s telecom industry is largely controlled by Telmex, a near-monopoly run by Carlos Slim. Ever since a supposed reform in the late 1980s transferred the country’s state telecom into Slim’s hands, Mexicans have paid first world rates for third world service—first for landlines, and now for cell service and internet access. And that’s when they live in a place with a network. Limited access and high prices meant that only 55 percent of Mexicans were using cell phones in 2011, according to the International Telecommunication Union.
Despite Mexico’s reputation for horrendous, Slim-driven telecom service and policy, it’s far from the only country that struggles with providing rural cell phone access. According to the GSM (for Global System for Mobile Communications, the standard technology behind a 2G network) Association, a consortium of commercial mobile providers from all over the world, 1.6 billion people in rural parts of developing countries don’t have access to mobile networks. That’s why Bloom and his collaborators at Rhizomatica say that if you really want to make the benefits of cell phones available to the people who need them most, it’s not enough to democratize the hardware by making the phones themselves super cheap. You have to democratize the infrastructure, the network itself. And that’s a lot harder to do.

Democratizing technology

From a hacker’s point of view, mobile communications came along at just the wrong time. The first commercial systems were deployed in 1991, right before the internet emerged from the academy and started making its way into people’s homes. By the time a strong open source community came into being, cellular networks were locked up behind walls upon walls of patents and proprietary equipment. Even today, “it’s very difficult to get your hands on the technology,” says Harald Welte, an open and free source software developer in Germany who works on mobile communications.

It wasn’t until around 2006 that old base stations started showing up on eBay, giving interested hackers like Welte a firsthand look inside the (albeit already outdated) technology that made 2G mobile networks possible. Out of straightforward intellectual curiosity, Welte snapped up a few and, four years later, he was able to make the first call on his reverse-engineered, open source network, dubbed Open BSC, referring to the base station controllers that coordinate traffic on a cell network.

Now, Rhizomatica is pushing Open BSC to its limits out in the real world. “We’re amongst the first people actually putting it into a live environment and using the shit out of it,” Bloom says. He first got interested in community cell networks when he was living in Nigeria and working with communities that were protesting the presence of oil companies in the Niger Delta. The activists there had cell phones, but thanks to the high cost of service—not to mention political forces that could monitor their communications or even shut down their network on a whim—it was difficult for them to share information with each other or with larger audiences. So Bloom decided to help them build what’s called a mobile mesh network, which connects cell phones directly to each other instead of routing calls through base stations or commercial networks. But the technology, which is mainly used in disaster relief situations like post-earthquake Haiti, proved to be too unreliable for everyday use. Sustained, real-world levels of traffic overloaded them, and the mesh networks frequently collapsed.

When a local man suffered several serious snakebites and needed antivenom right away, there was no signal.

A few years later, Bloom moved to Mexico to be with his now wife, who works with community radio stations in the Sierra Juárez. These villages wanted but couldn’t afford commercial cell service, and Bloom started thinking about a way to continue the project he had started in Nigeria. He decided to ditch the mesh network idea and went on the hunt for serious telecom technology, ultimately settling on Welte’s Open BSC as the strongest open source system. But since Bloom’s background isn’t in programming, he needed help installing the software on open source base stations he buys from NuRAN and another company called Fairwaves. He started enlisting the help of any experienced hacker who happened to pass through Oaxaca City on backpacking trips and the like. (One of them, an Italian, would eventually move to Mexico permanently to be part of the Rhizomatica team.) Today, Bloom spends much of his time personally driving the equipment out to villages like Yaee, getting soaked on as many roofs as he needs to in order to get the networks up and running.

The communities pay 120,000 pesos ($8,000 dollars) upfront for the equipment and installation, about one-sixth of what the commercial provider Movistar charges for a similar rural installation. Ninety thousand of the pesos go to buy the hardware, and the rest covers Rhizomatica’s time and expenses. Subscribers to the community network pay 30 pesos (about $2) per month for all local calls and texts, and the town keeps any profit left over after paying for electricity and maintenance. Thanks to a Mexican company called Protokol, which provides internet access all over rural Oaxaca, Rhizomatica can also hook up the town’s network to a voice-over-IP connection, which allows users to make very cheap long-distance calls to Mexico City and even the US, where many people have relatives. Once the network is installed, Yaee’s residents will be able to call the U.S. for 20 centavos (less than 2 pennies) per minute. A similar call from one of the town’s public landlines runs 15 pesos (about $1) per minute, a prohibitive cost for many residents.

Still, commercial networks have “20 years of headway” over the open source approach, Welte says, and Rhizomatica’s community networks can suffer from their distinct DIY feel. Bloom, Hernández, and the rest of the team must make sure to install Yaee’s tower above one of the town hall’s windows, so they can run an extension cord through it and plug the base station into a wall socket. That means whenever the power goes out in Yaee—which happens frequently, especially during the May-to-September rainy season—they lose the cell network, too. And until the town could raise enough money to move the entire installation to higher ground than the town hall’s roof (which happened in August 2014, three months later), there was no guarantee that Rhizomatica’s signal would be able to reach up the hillside to where Hernández and a good portion of Yaee’s residents live.

It’s this fundamental instability that causes the most frustration for users in towns that have had their community networks up and running for longer. In Yaviche, a similar sized town on the other side of the mountain from Yaee that installed its local network in September of 2013, Abi Martínez Ramos serves as the rural doctor and says that having any cell service at all has been a boon for emergency medicine. But when a local man suffered several serious snakebites and needed antivenom right away, “there was no signal,” he remembers. Someone had to physically find Martínez to administer treatment, just like in the old days.
Back in Yaee, it takes the team about 2 hours out in the rain to anchor the tower to the roof.

Raúl Hernández Santiago and Peter Bloom helped
install the first cell phone tower in the town
of San Juan Yaee, Oaxaca.

But it turns out the rain has caused a more serious problem than merely soaking everyone to the bone. Three cloudy days in a row have depleted the solar panels that power Protokol’s repeater antennas, knocking out Yaee’s internet access. With no internet, Bloom and his tech team can’t get the network online. They make plans to come back the following week to finish the job.

Despite its problems, an increasing number of communities in Oaxaca are eager to be part of Rhizomatica’s experiment, attracted by the low price and the promise of complete control over their networks. Keyla Mesulemeth Ramírez, who helps run the community network in Talea de Castro, a town of 2,000 that volunteered to be a Rhizomatica pilot project in the spring of 2013, fields one such inquiry in her office the day before the Yaee installation. Four men from a town called Yalahui have heard Bloom is in the area and they want to talk to him about installing a network in their village. They grow coffee, sugar cane, corn, and beans, and they’re tired of not being able to call home when they’re out in the fields. It’s annoying not to be able to call when you’ve forgotten your lunch, they say, but it’s downright dangerous when someone has an accident and needs help. Plus, everyone in Yalahui has family in Mexico City and the US, and they want to be able to call them without worrying about how much it costs. They’ve driven for 5 hours to talk to Bloom about a possible solution.

Mesulemeth is frank with the Yalahui men about the cost of the installation and Rhizomatica’s waiting list. But she’s sympathetic to their frustration of being left off the cellular grid. “Before, cell phone service was a luxury,” she tells them. “Now it’s a necessity.” She promises to put them in touch with Peter, who finds the group lingering over lunch a few hours later. He goes over the costs again, and says he’ll get out to Yalahui as soon as he can. Three months later, they’re making calls on a brand new network all their own.