American 2G Cooperative - new hope on the horizon

Dear friends, brothers and sisters, we all know that the current situation with 2G service in USA is abysmal: while T-Mobile, the last remaining operator, still have very good coverage in certain select spots, that coverage is also very spotty, the quality is atrocious in many places, and they use every dirty trick in the book to block new, non-grandfathered users from accessing that often-good network that still exists. We all know this reality, nothing new here - the real question is what do we do about it.

As some of you know, I am the kind of Warrior Woman who will never accept a "no" for an answer, and I do much better with action as opposed to passive lamentation. Earlier this year I and several other members of my California-based team (we are in San Diego area) founded a new non-profit corporation called American 2G Cooperative (A2GC). We are already set up as a legal entity, we are incorporated in Delaware, and we are applying for federal tax-exempt status under section 501(c)(12), a special designation that exists for mutual or cooperative telephone companies - note that it is not the usual 501(c)(3)! We are not providing any services yet - but read on.

I do have to disappoint all of you dear readers in that I am not at liberty to disclose all of the details, hence I will have to be somewhat vague in the description that follows. But what I can say is this: we are building an entirely new GSM/2G Core Network (CN). The CN is the part of every cellular operator's network that holds its own official MCC-MNC (those of you who have been generating your own GSM signals, you know what that is), acts as an issuance center for SIM cards (thus A2GC will issue our own SIM cards that are specifically made for 2G phones), issues phone numbers to subscribers and otherwise acts as your home service provider of record. We are going to operate as a membership cooperative: anyone is welcome to join as a member, you would pay your monthly member contribution, and in exchange for those monthly membership dues, you will get to enjoy our services. Once you receive one or more SIM cards from us as a member (we plan on pricing our service per human member, rather than per SIM line, so you'll be able to have as many active SIMs as you need), you will be able to access GSM/2G services in 3 potential ways:

• We are going to operate physical services in the traditional sense, from our own towers, in one or two (or three...) small select locations in USA. I am not at liberty to disclose any of the specific locations where we are in process of negotiating the necessary business deals, but all of them are remote, rural and underserved. And yes, the business deals which we are in the process of negotiating include the necessary spectrum license, involving portions of the spectrum (in one of the two GSM-suitable bands) that are currently fallow (no services) in those economically disadvantaged and underserved rural areas.

• Once we become a physical MNO (mobile network operator) with a spectrum license, we will be able to compel T-Mobile, via FCC rules, to grant us roaming access to all of their networks, including their unloved 2G network. Thus everywhere in the country where T-Mobile 2G service is still physically good, just access-blocked, you will be able (as an A2GC member) to access it in roaming mode. Yes, there will be per-minute charges, but on the flip side, T-Mobile will not be able to block you from access using any of their underhanded tricks! You may know that foreign SIMs roaming in USA get access to T-Mobile 2G without any of that artificial blocking - and A2GC members will enjoy the same, with SIM cards that are specifically made for 2G phones! (And with US phone numbers, and with billing and customer service systems that work in English...)

• Many people have already taken matters into their own hands, generating their own GSM/2G signal at home with their own personal femtocell (usually SDR-based) and Osmocom software. You can do this yourself right now, and you don't need me or A2GC for it. You can even make it 100% legal, not requiring an individual license, if you set your transmit power level below these limits:

https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-47/chapter-I/subchapter-A/part-15/subpart-C/section-15.209

The biggest current problem with setting up a personal femtocell on your own is that if you do it truly on your own, then you network will be isolated - it will be impossible to roam seamlessly back and forth between your own self-made network and T-Mobile with the same SIM or the same phone number. You can connect your self-made GSM network to VoIP and get a real outside phone number that way, but you still won't get roaming ability, and typically no SMS unless you are willing to be misclassified as A2P. A2GC will solve this problem: as a member of A2GC, you will be able to connect your personal femtocell (SDR-based or sysmoBTS 1002 or Nokia InSite, whatever hardware you can get your hands on) to our real Core Network - and then have the same phone with the same A2GC SIM switch seamlessly between your home femtocell and T-Mobile network outside your home, keeping the same A2GC-issued phone number!

But once again, I have to disappoint all of you a bit: none of these planned services are operational yet, and our current estimate is that it will probably be another year, or maybe even two years, before we launch our first service offering. Until then, there is nothing that any of you dear readers can do other than be patient. However, I am working like that freight ass from Sumerian king Gudea's dream-vision toward turning these ideas into reality, and this new network will happen!