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App Enables Surfing Over SMS/MMS Through T-Mobile
MrSeb writes "An ingenious browsing hack has emerged: if you have an Android smartphone and a T-Mobile (US) unlimited messaging plan, you can now use an app called Smozzy to surf the web... for free. Smozzy is just a wrapper around the standard Android browser, but instead of requiring a data connection, everything is funneled through SMS and MMS. Whenever you click a link, instead of firing off a packet to a remote web server, a web request is instead sent to Smozzy's intermediate server via SMS. Smozzy forwards the request, downloads the web page you're trying to visit, and then sends it along to your phone as MMS messages — and both SMS and MMS are completely free with T-Mobile's unlimited messaging plan."
Sounds Expensive.
This is really cool. I hope they do a version of BitTorrent as well...
No sig today...
Absolutely fucking slow?! Cool factor aside
How does this service handle SSL? Can Smozzy spy on you? This sounds very uncool.
"if you have an Android smartphone and a T-Mobile (US) unlimited messaging plan, you can now use an app called Smozzy to surf the web"
I remember the first WAP browsers that could use (special) SMS as a transport.
blog.sam.liddicott.com
Wonderful.... While this is a cool use of the technology, its sure to draw the ire of T-Mobile if it becomes popular.
A textbook case of perverse incentives...
From the perspective of efficiency or architectural sanity, that is about as far from optimal as you could wish to be(short of running the fastest analog modem connection that will survive GSM voice compression to take advantage of your unlimited voice minutes); but the magic of telco nonsense pricing makes it entirely reasonable.
Hopefully getting their control channel hammered with SMS noise will induce them to offer some sort of reasonably priced modest-speed data mechanism that isn't a horrible pile of hack...
Incidentally, of course, does this lovely mechanism make whoever runs "Smozzy" a MiTM even within SSL-wrapped browsing sessions, or does the TCP/IP->SMS insanity just wrap the packets whole and serve as a peculiar sort of link layer?
But I thought sending or receiving a SMS message was more expensive per MB than getting data from the Hubble Space Telescope. I suppose it is a workable solution if you really need data access but can't get it otherwise but I wonder about this since I also see stories about how excessive SMS messages going out over the control channels could overwhelm the cell network.
Time to offend someone
This is the logical conclusion of Cellphone companies allowing you arbitrary unlimited use of some services, and extremely expensive use of others. All protocols can be implemented using others; see voip (voice), email (mms/sms), and dial up modems.
Is there anything like this for BB? My parents love theirs (big screen, nice keyboard) and only occasionally want to surf the web, so an app for RIM like this would be great.
omg, so much stupid:
"Most of all, though, if SMS and MMS really are “free” for a mobile carrier — if they really don’t conflict with voice and data traffic — perhaps the creator of Smozzy has *inadvertently stumbled* across an amazing, *untapped resource*."
also, sms go through control channels, but i always thought getting the data payload of an mms *does* require a data connection through grps or what ever means there are in your 2g or 3g network... but i could be wrong. (also this mms fetch traffic could be included in the t-mobile contract)
Why bother? Just get a decent 4G data plan and use your browser.
I went straight to the Market to download the browser for my Android. Fired it up... now I'm stuck at "Request sent. Waiting for response..."
I suspect that every other T-Mobile Android user on Slashdot is doing the same, and the poor guy's SMS gateway is now a smoldering heap of slag.
Interestingly, the Market reported that the download count was "10+". Obviously, there's some latency there...
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
Just wait for it...
Now to get around data caps we need to have someone hack up a system that will use IP over voice so you can surf unlimited for free on nights & weekends. Now if we only had a way to carry electronic communication over phone lines.....
Although I'm sure someone has already patented using a modem over cellphones by putting 'on the internet' in it, so this won't work.
This signature is a waste of 42 characters
Isn't T-mobile supposedly one of the more open U.S. carriers when it comes to things like tethering, unlimited data, etc.? If that's true, it's a shame that people would take advantage of them like this. It's just this sort of cheap-ass shit that leads carriers to lock down their phones so much.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
sounds like a terrific pain in the ass. just pony up the money for a data plan, you cheap bastards. the couple of hours you'd spend getting fucked off by page delivery via MMS would more than pay for the cost of a data plan.
We can't have nice things. Someone always has to go and abuse the system and get it stuff banned for everyone. $5 this is banned within the month.
WIN.
if this takes off would they limited the unlimited. I can just see it now "You have unlimited txting, yes sir. You have unlimited up to 5,000 txts, yep. You are really unlimited because you see people really don't text that much a month and if you go over your 5,000 unlimited txts then it's only 10$ more a month for every 1,000 more. Yes sir on this plan unlimited txting is better than ever."
Paul: Father... father, the sleeper has awakened! - Dune
T-mobile is currently I think the only carrier that you can use a smartphone without a data plan. If this does take off you can bet that T-mobile will change that policy.
Don't know something? Look it up. Still don't know? Then ask.
It's called a WinModem. The connections are in hardware, but the expensive DSP is done in software. So you just dial a modem-capable (SLIP/PPP) ISP and do the DSP in software. Any phone these days is capable of that.
Now, if only we were using a phone that we could see the source code, so we could figure how to route the software output to the phone instead of from the mic...
It's a great idea and sounds similar to DNS tunnelling to get around kiosk logons.
Awesome. Now if we can just tunnel VOIP through it we can have free calling as well.
-- -- Warning. Do not stare directly at the sun.
" Multimedia Messaging Service , or MMS, is a standard way to send messages that include multimedia content to and from mobile phones. It extends the core SMS (Short Message Service) capability that allowed exchange of text messages only up to 160 characters in length."
Nope.
My 12-years old Nokia 6150 (dual-band EU GSM phone) had the capability to act as GSM PSTN modem: hook it to the PC using a custom serial cable and you was able to surf at 9600bps (that's the maximum rate allowed on GSM due to the protocol).
Obviously my provider, now using Vodafone logo (purchased by it), offered a special "PSTN" number with very low per minute rates to connect such way.
My bet is that some S40 Nokia phones might still be able to do it.. maybe the 6230i does it (and its po-port connector means you can use an usb cable)
in the end, no need to trick the OS that the source isn't the microphone, many old phones do it for you. You don't need 3G for such connection. And likely they're cheap on ebay.
"Unlimited" call time up to IIRC 5,000 minutes.
Well, then, it's not exactly unlimited, is it?
By proxying searches/browsing/etc, they instantaneously gain profiling data for every user that uses the service. I can't imagine that data won't be mined/used for remarketting purposes. Of course, like Comcast has told me on numerous occasions, using my email/browsing data simply allows them to improve my overall Internet experience...
"Please explain exactly how you sent and received 4.5 million text messages this month! Were you even doing your homework?"
Now to get around data caps we need to have someone hack up a system that will use IP over voice
The lossy compression that both GSM and CDMA2000 use for voice signals would interfere with using any decently fast modulation.
so you can surf unlimited for free on nights & weekends.
HughesNet satellite already offers unmetered wee hours (called "Download Zone"). Why doesn't cellular?
And it's not too slow for being essentially 'free', as in beer.
Not 'too' slow. No, not speedy. But it works. SSL is an issue, so I suspect this is not useful to do any banking with.
BUT...
One important item. TMO and everyone else expects you to have a data plan with your smartphone. So this does not get you out of a data plan. It does, however, make that 200MB plan with TMO a lot more useful. By limiting your use of that to say HTTPS and anything SMOZZY doesn't handle, and using SMOZZY to fully exploit your SMS plan, you'll avoid overages (caps and throttling) and incidentally fully leverage your SMS plan.
Since SMS was always a clever use of signalling, it will be the carriers' response to re-prioritize any excess SMS traffic to ensure network signalling gets through. as far as I recall, they never even promise SMS will be delivered, so if SMOZZY gets out of hand, they could respond as if it were SMS spam. And TMO might, though they might hold off longer than, say, VZW, which I predict would boil your firstborn if you tried this on their network. AT&T would attend the buffet. Sprint would probably quietly block them and deny all knowledge.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
We have running code, lets see the RFC.
Just remember that at 20 cents per message to send and 20 cents to receive (40 cents per message), it will cost $61,000,000 to transfer your mp3 collection over tcp/sms.
http://gthing.net/the-true-price-of-sms-messages
or else!
The phone companies created these absurd divisions of data.
http://press.nokia.com/1997/07/31/nokia-provides-narrowband-sockets-server-implementation/
"Narrowband Sockets defines an efficient implementation of User Datagram Protocol (UDP) using store and forward services over wireless messaging networks."
Failed horribly of course. I know cause I once built an agent to send push email to phones with it. Worked pretty well with my old Nokia 9110. I should have called it blackberry and built a big company around it ;)
In order to receive mms messaging on a T-Mobile smartphone you still need a internet plan. otherwise you will never receive nor send a mms request
Not sure why, but the app doesn't work at all for me. I'm on a T-Mobile pre-paid plan, and I get the smozzy text messages, but the page never finishes loading -- I tried several sites, and it just says "Starting to received response. Waiting for the rest.".
From what I read on the MMS Wikipedia page it looks like MMS uses the data channel anyway - there is an initial SMS message which refers to the attachment, and the attachment is downloaded by HTTP or WAP. I would think the carrier would charge you for that data.
I just bought a Sidekick 4g from T-Mobile. It came with the warning that some features would not work unless I called customer care and bought a data plan. I would have simply stuck to using Wi-Fi and the like to access the Android marketplace but for one thing, T-Mobile locks the GPS functionality to the data plan.
Apps like the linked are great. But they only work with HTTP. Other 'net functionality won't work.