Via Tech Radar:
Swedish-Asian telecommunications vendor VNL has launched a solar powered GSM system it hopes will extend the customer base for mobile phone networks in rural areas.

Rural areas in emerging nations, such as India or China, have been unable to own a mobile phone due to the lack of network coverage, as the towers required are expensive, power-hungry and there's a lack of skilled workers to install them.

The WorldGSM station uses around five per cent of the usual amount of electricity, and is a complete GSM network in itself.

Click to read more:
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5%? This is great news! One of the reasons I did communication engineering was to see sustainable communication access, both wired and wireless, in rural regions as well as under developed countries. I'm glad we are making fast progress at this area 😀

Here's a short whitepaper discussing the viability of GSM stations running under renewable energy in India:
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Also, this could be an interesting seminar topic and project idea 😉

I'm wondering.. since base transceiver stations can be run under their own power, that means we can place more of them within a area without putting a strain on the electrical grid. The smaller the macrocells, the better the performance 😀