From http://shareable.net/blog/a-low-cost-low-power-diy-cellular-data-network (http://web.archive.org/web/20140724065552/http://shareable.net/blog/a-low-cost-low-power-diy-cellular-data-network)
Shareable recently covered a group of residents of Jalalabad, Afghanistan who built their own open-source wireless network (http://web.archive.org/web/20140724065552/http://www.shareable.net/blog/afghans-build-open-source-internet-from-trash-0)from junk and everyday household items. For the less-industrious yet DIY-inclined, the Village Base Station (pdf (http://web.archive.org/web/20140724065552/http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~kheimerl/pubs/vbts_nsdr10.pdf)) is a low-power, easy to deploy tool developed by Berkeley professor Kurtis Heimerl (http://web.archive.org/web/20140724065552/http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/~kheimerl/) to create a GSM cellular data network in areas with limited power and network resources. MobileActive (http://web.archive.org/web/20140724065552/http://mobileactive.org/)recently got their hands on a prototype and tested it in a large American city, and the results were promising. In a post about the experiment, they note the benefits (http://web.archive.org/web/20140724065552/http://mobileactive.org/village-base-station-project)of the Village Base Station:
…?exible off-the grid deployment due to low power requirements that enable local generation via solar or wind; explicit support for local services within the village that can be autonomous relative to a national carrier; novel power/coverage trade-offs based on intermittency that can provide bursts of wider coverage; and a portfolio of data and voice services (not just GSM).