Ed Kozel, CEO of Range Networks, talked with RCR Wireless about the company’s recent addition of an enterprise focus along with its approach of using open source base station software to bring cellular coverage to underserved rural areas.
Kozel took over as CEO of Range Networks earlier this year. Range’s projects have included its OpenBTS product being used for search and rescue in Iceland, by RÓ§gg Corp., to find lost hikers by having Range Networks’ equipment flown on a helicopter in order to triangulate a device’s position. The company sees its open source software as a potential for significant innovation in the cellular world, where infrastructure systems have traditionally been closed and proprietary.
“Range has a software platform which provides full mobile network capabilities on commodity hardware,” Kozel said. “We’ve been using that in the past for rural, remote macro cells, you know — traditional mobile markets. The very same software running on servers allows enterprises, however, to have better in-building solutions as well as to have full, true fixed-mobile communications for the very first time.”
The company demonstrated its software’s capability at the show, using commodity hardware with mobile devices and a PBX setup. Watch the video:
Watch more video coverage from CTIA’s Super Mobility Week show on RCR’s YouTube channel.
