Solar-powered cellphone towers
Indian telecom vendor VNL launched its solar-powered GSM system last week , aiming to change the telecoms market in the rural and hard-to-reach areas all over the world.
The company has re-engineered GSM technology to reduce the power requirement from 3000W to only 50 to 120W. The system is powered entirely by solar energy and has a 72 hour solar-charged battery back-up in place.
VNL CEO, Anil Raj, said, "Telecoms operators and equipment manufacturers have traditionally failed to deliver GSM to rural areas for the simple reason that it’s just too difficult and ultimately not sustainable. There’s no power, no engineers, no infrastructure, a difficult terrain, low density - and, most importantly, low subscriber revenues. VNL’s equipment has overcome these challenges and provides operators with a truly viable way to connect the next billion mobile users."
The WorldGSM system boasts some very promising qualities: low-power, low cost, easy-to-deploy, near-zero maintenance, and a cascading star architecture that makes for easy expansion.
VNL’s first customer is Quippo, India’s telecom infrastructure company. I hope that other countries will follow suit very soon. (hey, north America, maybe we should switch to GSM like the rest of the world? any day now…)
I should also mention that VNL has a really great website . Did you know that the mobile phone population in India is growing by 2 million per week? Wow.
(Via Ethan Zuckerman and WorldChanging . Image is from VNL’s site.)
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