Mexican village own cell service created

If you live in a remote village in mexican completely ignored by any telecoms operator,you create your own cell service.

Rather than the village going without; they worked alongside indigenous groups, civil organisations and universities to put up a perch-like antenna on a rooftop. Then, by adding radio and computer equipment, they created their own micro provider called Red Celular de Talea (RCT)

The new local service costs 15 pesos (US$1.2) per month, which is 13 times cheaper than a bigger firm's basic plan in Mexico City. Calls to the US cost a few pennies per minute and are connected using VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) technology.

Since, other communities have shown an interest in setting up similar schemes. The equipment was provided by the California-based Range Networks, including; 900 MHz radio network, and computer software that routes calls, registers numbers and handles billing.

Due to the lack of bandwidth and availability however, the service does come with a catch. Users are limited to a maximum of five minutes for the time being as not to clutter the lines and cause issues or complete failures.