Cell phone "repeater"

On Tue, 29 Apr 2014 09:31:40 -0700, captainvideo462009 waxed lyrical:

When you set up your own GSM base station you are able to pretend you are any carrier and intercept any nearby GSM communication. News about these commercially available devices has been spreading since a few years

will sell you any at all.

Fortunately a much cheaper and potentially more invasive hardware option exists in the form software defined radio, which is are rapidly coming

specialized you can break the GSM encryption and do whatever the hell you want with people's private conversations.

Unfortunately you give me the 'wise guy' vibe and In contrast to my usual openness about these things I can not in good conscience clue you in any further.

If you think Lenny is a "wise guy", you haven't had dealings with a real one. I wish you could have met some of the colorful men I knew back east during the 60s. The difference would be readily apparent. Lenny is a legit technician from rural New Hampshire.

Whoah, secret information control.

just go here for more info on SDRs

On Wed, 30 Apr 2014 08:50:30 -0500, chuck waxed lyrical:

Oh, USENET. Never change. (I know you won't. Lenny is a legit technician from rural New Hampshire.

Okay, that's good enough for me. I'm from Finland myself.

It should be hitting the shelves in June. Price tag is 299 USD.

To decrypt A51 you need 2TB of fast storage, an OpenCL-capable GPU and a decent PC. A single 2TB spinning disk will be enough for the rainbow tables.

The new 3G encryption is, incredibly, faster to break than the old encryption. Rumors of high-level sabotage abound.

For legitimate use you would need to implement in software the repeater functionality mentioned. Software like this however isn't a one-shot deal so someone would need gainful employment developing it. That person would however have all the power of the NSA wherever you install your gear, so no matter who they are they can not be trusted to stick to principles of ethics.

On a wide-scale implementation you would probably be transmitting some encrypted data to Amazon's EC2 cloud and getting the encryption keys back whenever you have a new user, meaning the actual hardware on-site is actually rather cheap. Since work goes into this process you would probably charge per-user, data mine whatever they access, and sell the resulting PII on the open market.

I could be very rich, you know...

tem. They have asked me to see if it would be possible for me to come up wi th some type of system whereby they might be able to improve their spotty c ell phone reception throughout the building. The maintenance supervisor has heard of a type of "repeater" (if that is the correct term) that can be em ployed to accomplish this but truthfully at this point he seems to know mor e about it than I do. Would this be some type of diversity transceiver with multiple antennas throughout the building? This seems like it could be a f airly lucrative thing for me if I can find out enough about doing it. Can s omeone more familiar with this please enlighten me as to theory, structure of and design of the system, and equipment suppliers in the US? The structu re which concerns me is block wall inside, (class rooms) and out. Thanks fo r any assistance. Lenny

Nos It must have been a cold Winter in Finland because your brain is obviously frozen. I have to ask myself are you even trying to answer my question, or are you making wild assumptions and answering someone else's question? I ha ve no interest in breaking any codes, taping into other peoples cell phone conversations or doing anything illegal for that matter. So your "wise guy" receiver's detector is in serious need of adjustment, or perhaps you might be....And even if I was, I would certainly be a damn fool to do it for a m unicipality.

If you'll take the time to re read my post, I'm simply trying to make it so that people using their cell phones within the building will not have so m any dead spots through out the school. Lenny

You'll want to cover all the available vendors, bands, and modulation schemes, so a Nanocellular box from a cellular vendor isn't going to work. I have a few of these in service: They work, with some limitations. The big one is that the range from the repeater is only about 15 meters. The signal also doesn't penetrate many types of walls. It will work in open areas, such as shopping malls, auditoriums, gyms, and such, but individual classrooms are going to be a problem. There's no way you can cover the inside of a skool with just one unit, so that may also be a problem. I suggest you cover the public areas, and ignore the rest.

Inside zboost: As you might suspect, that much electronics is not going to be cheap.

Not only that but there is a new FCC rule that requires all BDA system installations be registered.

tm

On Thu, 01 May 2014 09:06:12 -0700, captainvideo462009 waxed lyrical:

How rude! Is this typical rural New Hampshire address?

The registration requirement is for Part 90 licensees (non-consumer wireless) that use class B (broadband) bi-directional amps. For example, a fire department might use it to get a sufficiently strong signal inside their building to operate pagers and HT's. So far, 827 users have bothered to register their BDA's.

To the best of my limited knowledge, there is currently no registration or licensing requirement for cellular BDA's.

Fair enough Jeff. Also, it is only needed for Class B BDAs, i.e. broadband vs. channelized.

What do the wireless carriers do to mitigate BDA interference? If you install one to provide cell coverage, is it not an unlicensed transmitter?

Here's the latest from the FCC:

More (or less):

I don't know as I'm not involved in that part of the puzzle. I have read some reports where the cellular provider had to go to the FCC to get some fool with a broken signal booster to either fix it or get it off the air.

I couldn't find any signal boosters that currently meet the new regulations available for sale. (I may have missed some). Officially, one now needs the approval from the carrier to operate the device. Since the older systems were carrier independent, that means multiple carrier approval, which is unlikely. I called Verizon support to ask about approval. They didn't have a clue what I was asking (especially since I'm no longer a Verizon customer).

After the regulatory smoke clears, I think the cellular signal boosters are a good solution if you can tolerate buying one for each cellular provider.

I have been involved with resolving a problem with public safety 800 systems where rebanding moved everyone down 15 MHz and backfilled with wide band cellular. The BDAs are all open to the new RF and run into overcurrent due to the broadband energy getting into the amps. The solution is to add a new filter to at least the donor side of the system and improve the inside antenna network.

Regards, tm

tem. They have asked me to see if it would be possible for me to come up wi th some type of system whereby they might be able to improve their spotty c ell phone reception throughout the building. The maintenance supervisor has heard of a type of "repeater" (if that is the correct term) that can be em ployed to accomplish this but truthfully at this point he seems to know mor e about it than I do. Would this be some type of diversity transceiver with multiple antennas throughout the building? This seems like it could be a f airly lucrative thing for me if I can find out enough about doing it. Can s omeone more familiar with this please enlighten me as to theory, structure of and design of the system, and equipment suppliers in the US? The structu re which concerns me is block wall inside, (class rooms) and out. Thanks fo r any assistance. Lenny

Thanks for the responses guys. This is starting to sound like a "job for Su perman", and one I will probably let go. And I'm sorry you didn't like my " address", NOS but you opened the door to that when you just assumed that I was some "wise guy" trying to get away with something illegal. So who was b eing rude here? Lenny