LTE support in OsmoCBC (Cell Broadcast Centre)

While having decent internet access is a commodity in some countries, in other parts of the world this is certainly not the case. When you want to run your own telecom infrastructure to change that, there are not that many options. The Osmocom project (Open Source Mobile Communications) is probably the most advanced open source solution available today. Reaching basic connectivity was a major step, but as users start to depend on this they need other facilities. Once such facility is a Cell Broadcast Centre (CBC), which is the central entity in 3GPP wireless networks taking care of all Cell Broadcast and Emergency Warning messages. This includes messages for WEA (Wireless Emergency Alert), KPAS (Korean Public Alerting System), ETWS (Earthquake and Tsunami Warning System), EU-ALERT, NL-ALERT and other related systems.

OsmoCBC is the only open source CBC ever implemented - but it only implements support for 2G/GSM networks, and not for 4G/LTE. Through this project 4G/LTE support will be added to OsmoCBC. so that operators of at least research, private or rural autonomous networks built on FOSS can notify their subscribers in case of emergencies.