Pirate Radio Station for $55 Could Help Decentralize Big-TelecomTony Cartalucci The FM transmitter will broadcast stored media within a limited range to any FM radio receiver nearby. It is a versatile proof of concept that can be used as is to cover your home, DIY drive-in movie, a high school ball game, or even a bike parade. In the comment sections below the entry, readers could already be seen expanding the parameters of the project to add more options and increase its utility. As reported before, while open source software and hardware, as well as innovative business models built around collaboration and crowd-sourcing have done much to build a paradigm independent of current centralized proprietary business models, large centralized corporations and the governments that do their bidding, still guard all the doors and carry all the keys. In this way, accessible pirate radio transmitters built from Raspberry Pi boards can join projects like PirateBox,Project Byzantium, Serval, and other tools to create local communication networks. While PirateBox and Project Byzantium create localized Internets and Serval connects mobile phones without the need for network coverage, pirate radio stations create localized radio content that can be used to connect us to our neighbors and greater community for entertainment and useful information and help during dire emergencies when centralized infrastructure fails. What to Do Now While a single pirate radio transmitter will not change the tide in the information war, each small step taken moves people forward, together in much greater strides. The demonstrated ability to create cheap radio transmitters with open source hardware and broadcast media across a given local range has great implications. There is no single solution to solving the problem, and no single problem has created the paradigms we find increasingly unacceptable today. But solutions like this are another step toward decentralizing big-telecom and putting technology long the monopoly of a handful of special interests into the hands of everyone else. What we do with that power and if it can be used to help build a better tomorrow is entirely up to us. Read other contributed articles by Tony Cartalucci here. 