Retro Mobile Phones

Earlier this week I migrated www.freecalypso.org to a new server, and that migration had a side effect of taking all of my Mercurial code repositories offline. (It happened this way because only the static file archive was migrated initially.) I am now pleased to report that all FreeCalypso and Themyscira Wireless Hg repositories are back online at this new location. Old URLs still work as well, handled via HTTP(S) redirect.

American 2G Cooperative (A2GC) is the company that “owns” the present Lemmy community in the sense of holding the top moderator role. The purpose of this post is to provide the necessary legal info and contact details.

Some people on That Other Site are asking about the status of my work with regard to the various GSM/2G-related projects I lead, most important of which is A2GC. I am still unable to post on that evil site, so I am going to post this summary here and then rely on other people to post a link in r/vintagemobilephones.

For several years now I operate a sysmoBTS 1002 at my home, along with a server that runs the requisite suite of osmo-* processes. The result is my own self-made GSM signal at my home; I call this network Themyscira Wireless, named after the fictional home of Wonder Woman. This home network of mine is interconnected with real PSTN via SIP, such that my ThemWi phone has a real phone number, can call any outside numbers and can receive calls from the outside world. For the past 3 years or so I’ve been using this home GSM system as my primary personal phone - while I do have a traditional POTS land line as well and will never give it up willingly either, ThemWi GSM is more convenient most of the time.

Since this community is open to an international audience and since many people online (whether they live in USA or not) are woefully misinformed about the state of GSM/2G services in this country, this post is being made to set the record straight.

For the purpose of this community, a retro cellular phone is one that requires a 1G, 2G or 3G network, as opposed to 4G or newer. Why would someone wish to use such a phone? Different people may have different reasons: