A new company wants to make you your own phone carrier, so you can use your Internet connection even when you’re away from home and roam to the networks of other people doing the same thing. The company, led by former Facebook engineer Kashif Ali and called Ukama, has launched a crowdfunding campaign on Crowd Supply, an engineering and creator-focused website, to make its devices available to people willing to try out the technology and start building a network.
Ukama is selling several different pieces of hardware that will be delivered next summer, according to Ali. The main component is a $799 tower node that can be mounted on a roof or outside a building so it can broadcast your home Internet connection via a signal that can reach up to a half-mile away. There’s also a $549 amplifier for the tower node, a $599 home node for indoors, and a $499 module that serves as the basis for a build-your-own cell radio.
The company promises that the nodes are both easy to use and hobbyist-friendly, describing them as “plug-and-play like a Wi-Fi router or fully customizable like a software-defined radio. You can manage the nodes locally using an API, or you can use Ukama’s cloud-based service, which it says will always be free for community users.
To connect to the network, you’ll need a Ukama SIM card, which can be physical or digital (good news for those who bought the eSIM-only iPhone 14). When you’re within range of your node, the SIM card will forward your calls and texts to your regular carrier, while ensuring that data passes through your personal network. When you’re out of range, you can switch back to your regular carrier, but also have the option to sign up for Ukama’s roaming data plan, which will use more of the traditional cellular network but offer very competitive pricing, according to the company’s press release. In the U.S., it estimates this will be around $8 per gigabyte.
The current plan is that roaming on other people’s Ukama nodes is free, but Kashif Ali admits it’s not a completely fixed plan.
