Swedish Company Trials Peer-to-Peer Cellphones

Dr_Barnowl writes "A company named TerraNet is going through a trial period for a p2p based mobile telephony system. Phones are used to route calls onto other phones, constructing mesh networks of 'up to 20km'. The BBC reports on the natural tendency of the big telecoms providers to want to squash this. I can see other problems though. The advantages in an environment with sparse cell coverage are obvious, but network effects mean that the number of connections in a heavily populated mesh grow exponentially. What happens to your battery life when your phone becomes a node? And while the company is optimistic that they have a viable technology model from IP licensing, the demand for devices supporting this is going to be proportional to the number of devices that it can connect you to."

Comments

Sick of concern about identity theft.

[JoeMarzen]

I am so sick of everyone one being oh so concerned about identity theft. I want to see some statistics. I am willing to bet the threat is severely overblown like terrorism. It's just something to upset people. Have you ever had your computer hacked into? Or do you only have second hand stories? I think a bigger problem is changing my passwords endlessly. I hate it!

Re:Privacy Concerns Anyone?

[Crazy Taco]

Will, know-how, AND hardware and hardware skills to pull the signal in and analyze it. This new system, however, requires significantly less effort, because the conversation is already being routed through the hardware of your phone, automatically. Now you probably just need to download a small peice of software to listen in. In essence, the vast majority of the hard work is done for you.

I know people will say, "Well, we'll encrypt the message", but when my phone is a man in the middle, good luck transfering the key without me finding a way to get it. This isn't just a wiretap (or as the parent said, listening in on the air) or some sort of passive observation. As part of the mesh, these packets are actually being routed to me, and I am supposed to send them on. Random numbering of TCP packets when initiating the connection won't help you when I flat out get the packets addressed to me.