Future Smartphones Won’t Need Cell Towers to Connect | Hacker News Reader

Future Smartphones Won’t Need Cell Towers to Connect

technologyreview.com

78 pointscjdulberger22 comments

I much prefer GAN (Wifi Calling) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generic_Access_Network) to LTE Direct. LTE runs on licensed spectrum, which means the licenseholder (the cell network) can squeeze you for as much money as they want. Unlicensed spectrum is always cheaper, and you hardly need LTE's range advantage for femtocells. Why use licensed spectrum for short-range stuff?

I also find it suspicious that this article emphasizes how much buy-in LTE Direct has from gigantic corporations, without making much of a case for why actual endusers would like it. A good clue is that there's no equivalent for Wifi MAC randomization (which iOS 8 does by default) in LTE Direct: spoofing your IMEI is a federal crime. There's no way to avoid being tracked by LTE Direct femtocells, short of shutting off your phone and sticking it in a metal box.

> spoofing your IMEI is a federal crime

Can anyone cite this? I've seen references to the bill S. 1070--113th Congress [0] and earlier versions of it, but it hasn't passed or really gotten started at all.

I read through a few online discussions [1][2][3] and it always seems to turn into a flamefest about how it's so "obviously illegal, been so for years", yet I haven't seen a concrete reference proving it. Sometimes discussion is suppressed, because it's clearly illegal in most other countries, which is fair.

I would not be surprised if there's some obscure application of FCC regulations, or even a generic reference to changing identifiers on property, that ends up covering it, but am curious if anyone can point it out.

Note, that the IMEI does not authenticate a paying subscriber to the network (SIM cards do), so it shouldn't be covered under theft of service.

[0] https://www.congress.gov/bill/113th-congress/senate-bill/107... [1] http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1852166 [2] https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/misc.legal.moderated... [3] http://www.howardforums.com/showthread.php/1786541-How-do-yo...

S.493 - Wireless Telephone Protection Act

https://www.congress.gov/bill/105th-congress/senate-bill/493

  Amends the Federal criminal code to prohibit knowingly using, 
  producing, trafficking in, having control or custody of, or 
  possessing hardware or software knowing that it has been 
  configured to insert or modify telecommunication identifying 
  information associated with or contained in a 
  telecommunications instrument so that such instrument may be 
  used to obtain telecommunications service without authorization.

You could probably argue that modifying the IMEI ("telecommunication identifying information") would not actually allow you "to obtain telecommunications service without authorization"-- you still need to reconfigure the SIM card.

Of course, stealing PINs without also stealing the ATM cards is prima facie a crime, even though the PIN alone doesn't allow you to obtain funds.

Good find, thanks. Apparently there are some data plans that are only authorized for use with certain phone models (i.e., the phones are locked-down so that the plan is not as "valuable"), which are identified by IMEI, so this could fit.

I wonder, do you have to be doing it strictly "to obtain telecommunications service without authorization", as opposed to increasing privacy? I noticed the text doesn't say "with intent to defraud" like the surrounding paragraphs[0].

[0] http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1029

Not defending phone operators but the problem with unlicensed spectrum is precisely that it's unlicensed. You're power limited and everyone and his uncle messes up the spectrum.

The problem with unlicensed spectrum is the same as for anarchist utopia. There's essentially a single rule (maximum power limit, but even that is poorly enforced), but lots of anti-social behaviors are possible even abiding by that rule.

There has been some very good work in how to add more structure and rules to unlicensed while keeping its good qualities: http://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=411...; http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/login.jsp?tp=&arnumber=154265...

You might find the history of unlicensed spectrum interesting http://mises.org/daily/1662 TLDR: in the 1920s spectrum was treated as a homesteadable property right, which you could use to stop others interfering with you and could trade.

Is that a problem? My wifi works great on the limited garbage spectrum that it has been allowed to operate on. I think spectrum licensing served an important purpose in the days when everything was analog, but now it's just a way to get a great return on investments in lobbyists.

How does digital change this? It is still subject to interference, noise, and bandwidth limitations.

At the RF level there's still a lot of pain with WiFi. It works okay for what it's meant for but the long-range/low-power stuff they want to do with LTE-direct wouldn't be possible.

5G is going to require frequencies so high that you'll need femotcells everywhere [1]. A nice side-effect of this is that most building materials will filter out the signal, so frequency planning/cooperation isn't as necessary as with traditional cellular frequency bands.

[1] http://research.ijcaonline.org/volume62/number10/pxc3884787....

The iOS8 WiFi probe MAC randomization implementation is quite flawed in that it's enabled only when you have location services off AND cellular data turned off! [0]

[0]http://blog.airtightnetworks.com/ios8-mac-randomgate/

> I also find it suspicious that this article emphasizes how much buy-in LTE Direct has from gigantic corporations

The last line of the article is the submarine: "Wireless carriers might even gain a new stream of revenue by charging companies that want to offer services or apps using the technology, Qualcomm says."

http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html

So something like "push to talk" is coming back to mobile phones. The more things change, the more they stay the same. Oh, maybe push-to-talk has never gone away.[1] (It's not a feature offered by my cell phone carrier.)

The article kindly submitted here with the interesting new news about phone-to-phone LTE communication reports, "In theory, LTE Direct could be used to create communication apps that route all data from device to device. Some chat apps can already use Wi-Fi and Bluetooth to link up nearby phones, but LTE Direct could offer extended range and better performance. However, carriers will control which devices on their networks can use LTE Direct because it uses the same radio spectrum as conventional cellular links. Wireless carriers might even gain a new stream of revenue by charging companies that want to offer services or apps using the technology, Qualcomm says." As usual, the actual implementation of this service will be all about carrier policies and business agreements.

[1] http://www.verizonwireless.com/support/faqs/PushtoTalk/faq.h...

Isn't this just a cellular mesh network? How does it compare to wifi mesh networking as far as range, security and usefulness? I'd like to see more of these decentralized alternatives to monopoly infrastructure providers, I'm just not sure how feasible they are.

LTE Direct is more about service discovery than data transfer.

As for mesh networking, it's hard. Routing becomes extremely complicated, especially when you're talking about mobile nodes. I used to work on protocol design for cognitive radios, where you have the added complexity of not having guaranteed spectrum. Mesh networks have certain advantages there,[1] but when we moved to a base station model things got exponentially simpler.

Distributed mesh networks are interesting in theory, but you have to be willing to pay a huge tax in terms of overhead and complexity.

[1] Say you have two nodes that, locally, never have common channels available. If you had a third node that shared at least one common channel with each, you could have it flip between the common channels to route data between nodes that otherwise can't talk to each other.

With facebook working on mesh-networking we can be assured that it will be corrupted and heinous. I don't quite understand how the tech community could just simply capitulate freedom, liberty, and anonymity to a malevolent demon like Facebook.

This would be fantastic for disaster situations if coupled with the right software. If the radios can speak on unlicenced spectrum, it'd open up even more possibilities. For example, you could have a "cellular" connection on all your devices, and not just your cell phone.

See http://stevenjewel.com/2014/01/android-mesh/ for some of my ramblings along these same lines from earlier this year.

Have you seen the Serval project? There may have been a talk at LCAU this year about adding a little USB dongle to extend mesh networks over 433MHz(?)

"Some see the technology as a potential new channel for targeted promotions or advertising."

A fair amount of the article is devoted to the potential for advertising, tracking and 'user experience' - which often equates to 'we will encourage you to buy something'.

I hope this feature has an 'off' switch or a set of granular user preferences.

It probably means that, like some "free" WiFi services, you have to watch an ad before you get to connect.

Nice! I’m sure Japan and South Korea would be awesome early deployment targets since nearly everywhere has such blazing fast internet to use as a backbone.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com