Transferring Data via Dropped Calls

Abstract

A cheaper alternative to conventional data communication services is desirable in several scenarios involving mobile devices such as phones. We propose a system for transmission of information over an existing telephony network. This system makes use of “dropped” calls as a transmission medium for carrying data. Since subscribers typically do not incur any charges for dropped calls, our system eliminates the cost associated with conventional methods of mobile data communication.

A “data link” layer implementation, herein called Dropped Call Data Link (DCDL), has been described that uses the above transmission medium. In order to send data using this system an application can define its own information encoding rules, or alternatively, use system-generated encoding rules. Communicating application makes use of the DCDL client-side interface provided by this system to send data. We show that reduction in data communication cost with our system is proportional to the number of mobile clients.