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Comment by ars | Hacker News Reader

So how does it work? I assume the LTE USB modem operates on T-Mobile frequencies, so does that mean it accepts all T-Mobile customers?

How's authentication done? How does T-Mobile permit you to use their frequencies?

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This is not about hosting an LTE 'access point'. It's about creating a access point which uses an LTE uplink. I agree, the title is somewhat misleading.

Correct. If you were to create an actual “access point” you will have the FCC and other agencies knocking on your door within minutes.

Within minutes? Seems optimistic.

I've heard tales of cell towers having more or less automatic interference detection and the owners have a big incentive to let the FCC know. For other things, it's so rarely enforced or "self-policed" (like ham bands) that it's super rare for people to get busted, even with triangulization being what it is. Some kid here in NYC was trolling on the NYPD frequencies (analog FM still) and it took quite a while to track him down.

There are so many cops going around with stingrays I sort of doubt that the FCC can be too aggressive about this stuff. I'd guess that the interference would have to be relatively major for them to show up very fast.

I don't think their response time would be nearly that quick. All the stories about Stingrays would imply that this actually isn't very well policed (FCC enforcement is reactionary. The carriers could be proactive, but then would discover the Stingrays. And if carriers were complicit with Stingrays, then Stingrays themselves wouldn't be necessary).

I would also think the widespread deployment of legit femtocells would provide a decent cover.

But yes, it is generally illegal. (Though this hasn't stopped OpenBTS from being developed)

Yes, we had the FCC (via FBI) knocking on our door within 30 minutes. This was about 10 years ago when we were doing research with an access point.

Sheesh! Do you care to share any more details? How dense of an area? How was it detected? If by "access point" you mean 2.4GHz, what was the actual problem?

It was a GSM antenna that registered with I think AT&Ts network in Philadelphia. It was part of a legitimate research project, so no charges or fines were placed on us.

Your description just makes me more curious! What do you mean by "GSM antenna" ?!

Should I really read that as you had a legitimate cell radio device, and just attached an unauthorized antenna? Or was the radio itself experimental/unapproved?

Here in the US, portions of the 900 MHz band are used for ISM uses. Hypothetically, could one deploy a LTE access point on LTE band 8?

What you're thinking of is called a base station.

https://discourse.criticalengineering.org/t/howto-gsm-base-s...

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