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Comment by pyre | Hacker News Reader

How many users are they expecting to garner by deploying these cell 'towers' to off-the-grid, rural locations? Sure the base station is solar-powered, but the users themselves need power for their cellphones, no? How many poor, rural towns that are off-the-grid have solar panels for cellphone chargers?

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One of the main issue is continuous power supply. You might get power for couple of hours a day which is good enough for charging mobile. But then towers would need to have a generator for 24x7 operation. So this technology fills that gap.

The problem with many Indian villages is that they get intermittent power and even when they get it, it might be a single phase current. While this is sufficient to keep the lights burning etc., (speaking from first hand experience..) you can hardly depend on this to keep a cell tower running 24/7. Hence, alternator backed photovoltaic panels might make sense.

Also, solar technology is not a pie-in-the-sky in India. Solar power is used for cooking, even large scale (like mid day meals for school children). The photovoltaic applications are less in number compared to the above.

The mobile telecoms business in developing countries is extremely vital and dynamic. Families and neighbors share individual phones, and you can rent cell phones for the time it takes to make a call.

Charging the phones is a small problem that already has multiple solutions (intermittent power from a generator, windmill, solar chargers, wind-up chargers, big batteries charged off a car, or lugged in from somewhere, etc), most of which will apply equally well to any new service areas opened by a device like this.

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