{"id":6197,"date":"2015-01-14T08:43:57","date_gmt":"2015-01-14T14:43:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/?p=6197"},"modified":"2015-01-14T08:43:57","modified_gmt":"2015-01-14T14:43:57","slug":"where-cellular-networks-dont-exist-people-are-building-their-own","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/?p=6197","title":{"rendered":"Where Cellular Networks Don\u2019t Exist, People Are Building Their Own"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><A href=\"http:\/\/www.wired.com\/2015\/01\/diy-cellular-phone-networks-mexico\/\">Lizzie Wade<\/a>: <\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Inside the cloud that is perpetually draped over the small town of San Juan Yaee, Oaxaca, Ra\u00fal Hern\u00e1ndez Santiago crouches down on the roof of the town hall and starts drilling. Men wearing rain gear of various impermeabilities cluster above him, holding a 4-meter-tall tower in place. Braided wires trail from four small circles welded near its midpoint; eventually those will be bolted or tied down in order to hold the tower steady during the frequent storms that roll through this part of Mexico\u2019s Sierra de Ju\u00e1rez mountains. They don\u2019t want it falling over every time it rains. Ninety thousand of the town\u2019s pesos\u2014a bit over $6,000\u2014are invested in the equipment lashed to the top of the tower, in a town where many residents get by on subsistence agriculture.<br \/>&nbsp;<br \/>&nbsp;The tower\u2014which Hern\u00e1ndez, Yaee\u2019s blacksmith, welded together out of scrap metal just a few hours earlier\u2014is the backbone of Yaee\u2019s first cellular network. The 90,000 pesos come in the form of two antennas and an open-source base station from a Canadian company called NuRAN. Once Hern\u00e1ndez and company get the tower installed and the network online, Yaee\u2019s 500 citizens will, for the first time, be able to make cell phone calls from home, and for cheaper rates than almost anywhere else in Mexico.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Lizzie Wade: Inside the cloud that is perpetually draped over the small town of San Juan Yaee, Oaxaca, Ra\u00fal Hern\u00e1ndez Santiago crouches down on the roof of the town hall and starts drilling. Men wearing rain gear of various impermeabilities cluster above him, holding a 4-meter-tall tower in place. Braided wires trail from four small [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6197"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6197"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6197\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6198,"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6197\/revisions\/6198"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6197"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6197"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6197"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}