Imagine running your own GSM network.  You can!  An upcoming presentation at the 25th Chaos Communication Congress in Berlin will demonstrate a GPL-licensed implementation of GSM.

In their abstract the authors outline the issues in defining and implementing the GSM standard – amusingly contrasting the openness of Ethernet/IP with the amazing secrecy of GSM.

They observe: “Even though the protocols are standardized and publicly available at the ETSI, all implementations are highly-guarded proprietary secrets of a few major players in the industry. The hardware is even more closed, as there is not a single GSM subscriber or base station chipset with even the least bit of publicly known information.”

Welte and Spaar’s project closely follows GSM specs and is intended for interoperability with existing environments.

Anyone have a few spare dollars?  Want to start a Telco with me?