Development of an inexpensive GSM base station for rural areas based on the OpenBTS project, which is built around an SDR, with a Linux-based PC platform for base-band processing and an external FPGA-based digital/analog Up/Down converter connected to the PC as a Universal Software Radio Peripheral (USRP). The PC runs the OpenBTS open-source project that implements a GSM air interface and maps the GSM traffic and control signals to an open-source Asterisk VoIP switch connecting the calls as a VoIP call to the external world. The open-source project in its current form is not suitable for practical operational environment and we propose to extend its functionality and design to suite rural applications and integration with network operators.