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Communications Wireless Networking Hardware Technology

Mobile Cell Phone Towers For Disaster Relief 210

Posted by timothy from the well-seattle's-a-reception-disaster dept.
cerberus4696 writes "According to today's Denver Post, Verizon recently premiered one of its new Cells On Light Trucks (COLTs), a complete, self-contained CDMA cell that can be moved to wherever it's needed, such as the scene of a natural disaster or a large public event. Since a standard CDMA cell can only handle a theoretical maximum of 62 calls at a time (usually less in practice), the network of permanent fixtures can quickly become overloaded in high-use situations. Verizon already uses a larger version of the system known as a Cell On Wheels (or COW; gotta love these acronyms), but as it takes three trucks and the better part of a day to deploy, nimbleness of response has apparently been an issue."
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Mobile Cell Phone Towers For Disaster Relief More

Mobile Cell Phone Towers For Disaster Relief

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  • sheesh (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    European GSM operators have been doing this for years.
    • ... are pretty much portable. There are perhaps half-a-dozen now across Rannoch Moor in Scotland. They consist of a metal "shed" with the cell tower antenna on top, and a diesel generator and fuel tank which gets topped up by a guy with a Landrover and a bowser every week or so. Typically they're sited on a hilltop, up to half a mile from the road. The cell tower "shed" is about the size of an Escort van, maybe a bit bigger. Certainly I see no reason why you couldn't fit the whole lot, with a folding a
    • "European GSM operators have been doing this for years."

      Well that certainly defeats the claim that America is the first to do it.
    • Wealso have those, but CDMA, for about 3 years here in Brazil. They're usually used in shows and sports events.

    • Re:sheesh (Score:3, Interesting)

      by linuxtelephony ( 141049 )
      The first COW I built/worked with was in '92. It was a low capacity system, but it was entirely self contained, including a telescoping 100 or 150' tower. You could literally drive it to a location, plug in power, the antennas, raise the tower, and have a functional cell. Using a generator, you didn't need to plug in power. And, in 92, cellular penetration wasn't that deep so the low capacity wasn't a big problem.

      A couple of years later I saw a SOW (Switch on Wheels), though it took a little more effort to

  • Pictures? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Karamchand ( 607798 ) on Wednesday June 30, 2004 @05:51PM (#9575916)
    Does anyone have pictures of these thingies?
    Remembers me about those Lasershow-trucks from Lobo [www.lobo.de] - they're really cool!

  • wow, only 62 calls at once? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 30, 2004 @05:53PM (#9575935)
    That seems really limited. Hell, I bet my local high school would saturate a cell every time class let out, there were always people making calls or listening to messages. I'm surprised I don't see more towers with the number of cell phones I see daily. Of course, I am from Seattle, so the lousy reception they mention applies to me :(.

    Anonymous Coward

    • Re:wow, only 62 calls at once? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by gl4ss ( 559668 ) on Wednesday June 30, 2004 @06:04PM (#9576056) Homepage Journal
      why would you need to see something that can essentially be the size of a pc case strapped on some roof?

    • These cells on light trucks can do slightly less than 62 - most of them only 45.

      They're known as COLT45s!

      *Ba-dop*

      Thank you! I'll be here in Vegas until the 14th. Try the veal.

    • Re:wow, only 62 calls at once? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Phil Karn ( 14620 ) <karn.ka9q@net> on Wednesday June 30, 2004 @06:30PM (#9576317) Homepage
      That figure is a little misleading. 61 (not 62) is the number of available traffic channels per sector and per RF channel for the original mid-1990's IS-95 CDMA standard. The number 61 comes from having 64 Walsh code channels, minus three for overhead: pilot, sync and paging.

      Sectorization refers to the practice, common with all cellular technologies, of dividing up the area around a cell site into regions, or sectors, each served by its own set of directional antennas. Three sector cells are extremely common; that's why so many towers have triangular platforms with a set of antennas on each side. There are usually three antennas on each side: one for transmit and two for receive, with the extra receive antenna providing spatial diversity.

      Most CDMA cell sites in built-up areas have three (or six) sectors, operate on more than one 1.25 MHz RF channel, and use the newer CDMA 2000 1x standard. That can easily provide a total cell capacity of considerably more than 61 calls.

      CDMA 2000 1x doubles the number of Walsh code channels (to 128) by adding a second set of traffic channels in quadrature to the original 64. Virtually all CDMA phones sold over the past few years do 1x.

      Because of CDMA's inherent robustness, the same RF channel can be reused in adjacent cells and even adjacent sectors, greatly increasing the overall capacity of the spectrum in a given area. Because no careful frequency reuse plan is required, CDMA is also very well suited to the rapid deployment of cells in "hot spots" as described in this article.

      Disclaimer: I work for Qualcomm.

      • Re:wow, only 62 calls at once? (Score:5, Funny)

        by provolt ( 54870 ) on Wednesday June 30, 2004 @06:45PM (#9576460)
        Hey, what do you think you're doing here!?! You're stating facts, and giving real explainations. If I wanted that, I'd go read a book.

        I come here for uninformed and incomplete comments from college freshmen who think that they know everything about cell phones because they know how to operate the features on a phone. I don't want someone who understands telecommunications. I would prefer someone who know how to program. Because being able to program a PC is basically the same thing as telecommunications. So why don't you just take your "facts" and "knowledge" and just go home.
      • Work for Qualcomm? Isn't that an understatement? :)

      • There are usually three antennas on each side: one for transmit and two for receive, with the extra receive antenna providing spatial diversity.

        I had been under the impression that these were a phased array, enabling the antenna to be pointed in any direction for transmit. The phase relationship of the antennas on transmit would mirror the phase relationship of the received signal, thus focusing the signal in the direction of the handset. Such focusing would be signal-specific, enabling the antenna to

        • You can think of the two receive antennas on the tower as something like a (very) simple 2-element phased array. Because the antennas are physically separated, they see slightly different versions of your mobile's randomly fading signal. Even if you fade out completely on one antenna, you may still be strong on the other. The receiver combines the signals from the two antennas and demodulates their sum, giving weight to the stronger of the two.

          It's not a true phased array because the two signals are indep

    • Yeah, it seems just unrealistic.... I'm in Norway, so there's GSM here, but if it could only handle 62 calls at a time, you would need to put up cell towers with extreme density in densely populated areas... I think it sounds like it is a order of magnitude off...

      Anybody know what the corresponding number is for typical GSM towers? I mean, with the University of Oslo campus, where there are like 30000 people, there's just a handful of antennas, and I'm willing to bet there are many hundred calls at peaks

      • Number of calls per cell is variable, it's apparently 992 calls for the entire GSM frequency range (which isn't implemented at a single cell). A better comparison might be number of channels/cell/MHz. Which for GSM seems to be around 6.5, and for 2G CDMA, around 12. So in reality you're looking at about half the number for GSM, though interference between GSM cells tends to be smaller, so it does depend very much on cell density and geography (and cost too, of course), probably then an average of about 30 c

  • Chargers (Score:3, Funny)

    by uberfruk ( 745030 ) <uberfruk@yahoo.com> on Wednesday June 30, 2004 @05:54PM (#9575948) Homepage
    Does it have chargers for the depleted cell batteries?

  • COWs? (Score:5, Funny)

    by daringone ( 710585 ) on Wednesday June 30, 2004 @05:54PM (#9575949) Journal
    If you put a cell on a COW, can you tip it?

  • Traffic (Score:3, Interesting)

    by underpar ( 792569 ) on Wednesday June 30, 2004 @05:54PM (#9575951) Homepage
    Whether or not roads would be open is in question not to mention its slow response time. Maybe they could make it fly or something. It's always cool when things fly, right?

  • So... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    ..what happens if I use a competitor's phone system (like, say.. Sprint?). It's absolutely no benefit to me.

    If they were really for "disaster relief" and not "public image relief" these mobile towers would be system-neutral.

    Actually, I think it highlights a bigger problem - if the companies worked together with standards that were compatible, mobile phone coverage would be much better and busy networks would be much less of a problem.

    • Re:So... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by daringone ( 710585 ) on Wednesday June 30, 2004 @05:57PM (#9575986) Journal
      If you're on a network that promises "No Roaming" such as Sprint's Fair and Flexible America or Alltel's Total Freedom, it shouldn't matter what company puts up the tower... you can use it.
    • ...because, with only one standard, there would never be any competition between standards, which would probably lead to stagnation...but at least you can make the call on your analog network :-)

      ...or the current way, where you can select features based on your needs (high-speed data, highest call quality in your area, international roaming, etc)
    • If the competitor uses the same signaling technology (GSM vs CDMA vs PCS vs old analog stuff) or signaling your phone can use, and you have a "no roaming fee" type plan, it wouldnt matter anyways.

      As for working towards a standard and busy networks... thats what signaling standards ARE. Of the many companies out there, they all use one of the standard signaling specs. Sprint for instance, uses PCS, which is one reason a phone purchased for use on the Sprint network will only work on the sprint network (or r

  • Nextel (Score:3, Insightful)

    by jwcorder ( 776512 ) on Wednesday June 30, 2004 @05:55PM (#9575965)
    Nextel has been doing this for a while as well, and recently, since they now are the primary sponsor for NASCAR, they have been taking enough of these units to all of the tracks to ensure that everyone can get NEXTEL service at the event. Great marketing.

  • Natural (or other) disaster (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ffejie ( 779512 ) on Wednesday June 30, 2004 @05:56PM (#9575975)
    This could be an incredibly useful technology. Anyone who had someone in New York/DC during 9/11 knows how difficult it was to get a hold of anyone that day. Aside from the fact that cell towers went down with the WTCs, Verizons CO (central office) was right next to Tower 1 and 2, knocking out quite a few landlines. Switching capabilities were compromised, leaving most of us with "All circuits are busy." In the future, deploy a few dozen of these and the cell phone capacity could ramp up rather quickly in an extreme event.

    • Re:Natural (or other) disaster (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Dun Malg ( 230075 ) on Wednesday June 30, 2004 @06:26PM (#9576286) Homepage
      This could be an incredibly useful technology. Anyone who had someone in New York/DC during 9/11 knows how difficult it was to get a hold of anyone that day. Aside from the fact that cell towers went down with the WTCs, Verizons CO (central office) was right next to Tower 1 and 2, knocking out quite a few landlines. Switching capabilities were compromised, leaving most of us with "All circuits are busy." In the future, deploy a few dozen of these and the cell phone capacity could ramp up rather quickly in an extreme event.

      Unfortunately, none of these would have really helped on 9-11. The fact that huge swathes of Verizon's infrastructure were taken out by the towers collapsing meant that it wasn't just a lack of cell tower capacity. They would've needed dozens of microwave links to even BEGIN to handle the loss. COLTs and COWs are handy for "lesser" disasters (floods, ice storms, etc) where a permanent cell towers are either out of commission or overloaded but most of the basic telecom infrastructure is still functional.

      • Also keep in mind that, even if Verizon's cell phone network had survived 9/11 intact, it still would have been on its knees. Natural disasters are to cell phone networks what slashdotting is to web servers... except that slashdotting doesn't usually begin with the physical destruction of the hardware.
    • No matter how many cellular towers you have there is still the matter of the MSC (Mobile Switching Center) which is the hub of the system. The MSC is where mobile-to-mobile calls get routed between towers and mobile-offnet calls get routed to the LEC (Local Exchange Carrier) for local termination, or to the chosen IXC (Inter eXchange Carrier) for long-distance termination.

      Most towers are simply spokes hubbed back to the MSC. If that connection to the MSC is lost the cell is pretty much useless. If

  • Bad acronym (Score:4, Funny)

    by hipoppotamus ( 705632 ) on Wednesday June 30, 2004 @05:56PM (#9575976)
    I wonder why they didn't call it a Cellular User Node Transport? I think that would be nuch better.

  • 9-11 used something like this (Score:5, Interesting)

    by PenguinRadio ( 69089 ) on Wednesday June 30, 2004 @05:57PM (#9575983) Homepage
    Near the Pentagon in the first days after the attack they put up some towers and said they were using it to triangulate the location of cell phones that might still be on and inside the rubble. It ended up staying there for about six months or so.

  • Llamas? (Score:5, Funny)

    by op00to ( 219949 ) on Wednesday June 30, 2004 @05:58PM (#9575993)
    Verizon has taken even more dramatic action to cope with disasters in the past. In 2000, during the Hi Meadow fire near Bailey, the company used helicopters and llamas to transport equipment to the rugged terrain, Weaver said.

    Did anyone else notice this? Llamas. And helicopters. Sounds elaborate. Makes me glad I'm not with Verizon.

  • Which is why Ham ops are still useful (Score:5, Informative)

    by MooseByte ( 751829 ) on Wednesday June 30, 2004 @06:00PM (#9576017)

    Which is a good reason that Ham radio ops are still useful, particularly in disaster relief scenarios where much of the local infrastructure may have been destroyed.

    But first you have to get us to stop talking about the weather and our rigs. :-)

  • Mobile Cell Phone Towers For Disaster Relief? (Score:4, Funny)

    by WwWonka ( 545303 ) on Wednesday June 30, 2004 @06:01PM (#9576024)
    Remember the good ole days when you went behind a tree for diaster relief?

    Those damn kids and their new technology!
  • I'd hardly call Bonnaroo [bonnaroo.com] a disaster, but Sprint's crappy cell coverage of the rural Tennessee farm didn't make squishing thru midnight mud any easier. They sure could have used more of those towers. And, for that matter, so could the holes in NYC coverage.
  • From the article:

    "In 2000 ... the company used ... llamas to transport equipment to the rugged terrain, Weaver said."

    Llamas, Cows, and Colts, all in a post about deprecated cellphone tech. It brings a tear to my eye.

    -theGreater Barnyard Activist.

  • News on parade... (Score:5, Funny)

    by k4_pacific ( 736911 ) <`moc.oohay' `ta' `cificap_4k'> on Wednesday June 30, 2004 @06:03PM (#9576051) Homepage Journal
    This is News... On... Parade...

    (Queue trumpets)

    Thanks to new advances in radio cullularology, our fearless fighting men in Europe can stay in touch with one another in the field and their commanding officers back at the base. This is accomplished by the US Army's Verizon Corps, who follow our troops across Europe erecting cellular phone towers at key battle sites. This gives our fighting men an advantage over the German oppressors, who are forced to rely on tin cans connected by string. So, when the US Army asks, "Can you hear me now?", America can proudly say, Yes We Can.

    This has been News... On... Parade...
  • Cell will not replace two way radio for emergency services for a long time because two way radio can keep going after a an earthquake knocks out all the cell towers and the emergency services can still communicate when everyone is choking the network by phoning there friends to ask "Did you feel that?".

  • Blimps (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Omega1045 ( 584264 ) on Wednesday June 30, 2004 @06:06PM (#9576082)
    Why not a blimp with CDMA cells tied to an anchor (truck, etc) with power running from the anchor? Seriously, you could probably tow a launch platform (uhaul sized trailer) behind a small pickup, suv, van etc with an He supply and a generator.

    You drive to site, inflate, and let her pop-up. Crank up your Honda generator and away you go. And now let the EEs shoot down my idea (not literally).

    • Re:Blimps (Score:4, Informative)

      by Jeremiah Blatz ( 173527 ) on Wednesday June 30, 2004 @10:36PM (#9577914) Homepage
      > And now let the EEs shoot down my idea (not literally).
      They probably won't [mbusinessdaily.com]
    • There are probably other slashdotters who can answer this better than I can, since my wireless career involved crunching the numbers from the cell rather than actually deploying them -- but typically a COW or COLT will use a microwave antenna to connect to the central switching office. The microwave dish needs to stay in alignment with its counterpart on the other end, and if the dish is hanging from the side of a blimp... well, you're probably going to spend all your time re-aligning the dish over and ove

  • Making Amature Radio Irrelevant? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by ackthpt ( 218170 ) * on Wednesday June 30, 2004 @06:06PM (#9576083) Homepage Journal
    a complete, self-contained CDMA cell that can be moved to wherever it's needed, such as the scene of a natural disaster or a large public event.

    I rather wonder, aside from the hobby aspect, how much longer Amature Radio will remain relevant. Seems disasters where AR would really shine and this sort of thing seems to replace them, as now pretty much anyone can afford a hand held phone, where once transmitters and receivers were the domain of those who actually cared enough to outfit and train themselves to be available for when there was need. Now you just whip out a cell phone and dial 911.


    • Good question. For day-to-day 911 calls, yes cellphones are fantastic tools that have completely overwhelmed turf which Hams once had a unique claim to (2-way mobile comm). Natural disasters are still another story, however.

      "Now you just whip out a cell phone and dial 911."

      Now what happens when that cyclone roars through and tears your cell tower network to shreds. What do you do until an emergency cell network of limited capactity is rebuilt? Meaning transported to disaster area, properly placed and

    • Well, the reason that Amateur radio still has an edge over a COW is that a COW or COLT still need to be tied to the PSTN (public switched telephone network) to operate - they have to hand the call over to the system to be routed. Also, the cell system is a one-to-one system, not a one-to-many - you cannot easily say "All units, this is the Emergency operations center - we need somebody with blankets and food to respond to 9th and Main - any unit that can respond, please answer."

      An amateur radio repeater ju
    • Mobile repeaters are not new. This is esentially what these mobile cell towers are. But in order to work, they still need to be connected to the greater cell/phone network.

      Enter amateur radio. Your typical handheld or mobile radio (which is not a toy like most cell phones are) are much more powerfull and usually have a greater bredth of configuration options. Thus, they can quickly be configured to throw together an emergency P2P network of operators, even in the absence of the normal local amateur repeate
    • I rather wonder, aside from the hobby aspect, how much longer Amature Radio will remain relevant. Seems disasters where AR would really shine and this sort of thing seems to replace them, as now pretty much anyone can afford a hand held phone, where once transmitters and receivers were the domain of those who actually cared enough to outfit and train themselves to be available for when there was need. Now you just whip out a cell phone and dial 911.

      The problem with cell phones is they're only wireless for

  • After the last time I was trapped in a flash flood I was mortified when my friends discovered I did not have the latest ring tones for my mobile.

  • dirigibles (Score:4, Insightful)

    by awb131 ( 159522 ) on Wednesday June 30, 2004 @06:10PM (#9576123)
    I always thought that unmanned dirigibles would be great for something like this. Or for additional cellular (and wi-fi) capacity for special events, e.g. the olympics.

    I mean, a couple of gyroscopes and some electric motors is all it would take to keep the thing approximately where it's supposed to be. They could carry batteries that recharge using solar cells during the day.

    And then I thought, surely someone else has thought of this -- but I never hear anything about them, so maybe not.

  • InfraLynx communications vehicle (pictures) (Score:3, Informative)

    by llzackll ( 68018 ) on Wednesday June 30, 2004 @06:11PM (#9576138)
    InfraLynx builds various vehicles now being used by the Homeland Security dept and the military. They have mobile cell towers, satellite uplinks, and all kinds of communications equipment.

    2600 took some pictures. they are here http://www.2600.com/offthehook/2003/1001files/ [2600.com]

    another link:
    http://iwce-mrt.com/ar/radio_infralynx_hummer_deli vers/ [iwce-mrt.com]

    and the google page: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&q=infr alynx&btnG=Google+Search [google.com]

  • Is it possible (read: feasible) to create a private cellphone network by running smaller cell sites and working alongside the existing national networks?

    It seems to be quite hard to find out about exactly how the phone system works; it seems to me that a localised network in which phones are all able to call each other but not anyone outside the network could be useful in situations where currently two-way radio is generally used. It also seems like quite a fun project, assuming it's not prohibitively expe

    • Not unless you can pony up for licensed spectrum or build handsets that work in unlicensed. Either way, you aren't going to have it easy trying to make interoperate with the rest of the PSTN or even VoIP phone networks.

  • Not really Disaster relief (Score:3, Interesting)

    by pigpilot ( 733494 ) on Wednesday June 30, 2004 @06:25PM (#9576268) Homepage

    Loss of phone services in the situations the article describes is certainly inconvenient for the public, but hardly a disaster. Unless they were talking about the companies revenue.

    I'd be more interested if they could find a way to set up fast communications networks when there has been an earthquake or such where good communications may really help rescue and reconstruction efforts.

    But then in that situation you could certainly put more useful facilities on three trucks than a cell phone system.

  • "Verizon already uses a larger version of the system known as a Cell On Wheels (or COW; gotta love these acronyms)"

    Oh neat, they named it after my ex! Why do ya suppose they changed what the C stood for?
  • Verizon already uses a larger version of the system known as a Cell On Wheels (or COW; gotta love these acronyms), but as it takes three trucks and the better part of a day to deploy, nimbleness of response has apparently been an issue."

    I can still remeber that awful day like it was yesterday. I'm sure anyone in the new york area can, unfortunately. I was going into work late that day. The first thing I did when I realized what was going on was to call my boss to see how everyone at the company was doin
  • Shmacronmys.

    I'm half pissed after Portuagal beat Holland, and I can still remember IBM trying to call an air movement device an "Amd".

    Most of us called an AMD a "fan", however IBM though it meant "Air Movement Device".

    If course, DASD, (remember, I'm half pissed) is Direct Area Storage Device? Also called a disk?

    Just because it's an acronym, doesn't mean it is easier to say or remember.

    Now if I can just remember that my THC input device is also called a bong, i'll be very happy.
  • Kills me every time you see a story about Verizon Wireless cellular products they just say Verizon. Verizon only has a stake in the company they dont run it.

  • Who cares about CDMA.. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by keeboo ( 724305 ) on Wednesday June 30, 2004 @07:11PM (#9576656)
    Now show me some news on GSM, then the 'rest of the World' might be interested.

    • Used in Australia too (Score:3, Informative)

      by csirac ( 574795 )
      Australia uses CDMA too, since it's cheaper and more efficient to roll out than GSM, especially when trying to cover 1000s of K's of sparsely populated areas.

      Unlike GSM, however, CDMA in Australia is (AFIAK) a Telstra-only service (Australia Telecom).

      CDMA performs surprisingly well, almost matching the range of the old analogue AMPS towers we had circa 1999, and at a fraction of the cost (per base station).

      Too bad the first (Qualcomm) phones they sold for it were crap - buggy firmware, expensive car kits
      • CDMA in Australia is (AFIAK) a Telstra-only service (Australia Telecom).
        Australia's Orange network is also CDMA, and the "3" network is using W-CDMA (UMTS), but these networks only cover the Sydney and Melbourne areas. The other nationwide networks in Australia (Vodafone and Optus) are both using GSM.

  • Old News (Score:3, Informative)

    by rediguana ( 104664 ) on Wednesday June 30, 2004 @07:17PM (#9576690)
    Agree with another poster here... they rolled out a mobile cell site at the Pentagon on Sept 11, and handed out precharged mobile phones for the responders to use.

    Here in New Zealand we have had mobile cell sites at popular New Years holiday spots (to handle surge capacity) when the country goes on holiday for a week or two at Xmas/New Year. They have been doing this a couple of years at least.

    Whata so special about this one?
  • grab an x86 box, run voip and route all the incoming calls over a wap. You could provide jobs for the homeless by having them tote linux-laden backpacks all over the city as repeaters.

  • Pictures + in Europe a normal thing.. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by xmedh02 ( 100813 ) on Wednesday June 30, 2004 @08:21PM (#9577211) Homepage
    Mobile cells for disaster relief or for big public gatherings (concerts, festivals..) have been in Europe for years.. Here are pictures from floods in Prague in 2002 [idnes.cz].
  • Gee. It doesn't matter how much people know, or how much info is available, "They" will make damned sure you are living beneath the great EM Web.

    And virtually everybody goes along with it, deliberately avoiding all the questions too uncomfortable to ask.

    I've sat in on government hearings and watched bullshit laws concerning cell tower placement policy rammed through by fat, red-faced balding nerd-boys living out political power fantasies, agreeing with everything said by smarmy lobbyists from the telecom
  • Is that a CDMA cell in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?

  • Nothing new (Score:3, Interesting)

    by zmooc ( 33175 ) <zmooc@[ ]oc.net ['zmo' in gap]> on Thursday July 01, 2004 @02:28AM (#9578910) Homepage
    I've already seen such trucks on festivals around Europe about 4 years ago and probably made quite a few calls through their systems too - nothing new here.

  • This is hardly new (Score:4, Interesting)

    by kju ( 327 ) on Thursday July 01, 2004 @04:34AM (#9579463)
    At least for GSM such mobile base stations are technology which had already happened years ago. In fact one of the dutch mobile providers had a mobile BTS at the hacker camping HIP in 1997.

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