Fabrice is the man!

Fabrice Bellard, best known as the author of FFmeg and QEMU software, is back in the news. His company Amarisoft has released a 4G LTE base station running entirely in software on a stock PC. The result is a 4G platform priced at least ten times less than a traditional box.

This is good news for small network operators and private companies e.g. off-shore oil rigs, remote mining operations and adhoc network providers. Amisoft has not released the cost of the software but the price for the radio front end (based on the Ettus N210 and SBX daughter board) is around $2,000.

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