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LTE Upgrade Will Let Phones Connect To Nearby Devices Without Towers
An anonymous reader sends this excerpt from MIT's Technology Review: A new feature being added to the LTE protocol that smartphones use to communicate with cellular towers will make it possible to bypass those towers altogether. Phones will be able to "talk" directly to other mobile devices and to beacons located in shops and other businesses. Known as LTE Direct, the wireless technology has a range of up to 500 meters, far more than either Wi-Fi or Bluetooth. It is included in update to the LTE standard slated for approval this year, and devices capable of LTE Direct could appear as soon as late 2015. ... Researchers are, for example, testing LTE Direct as a way to allow smartphones to automatically discover nearby people, businesses, and other information.
Do we know if you are able to block LTE Direct? Otherwise, you may find out that price whether you wanted to know or not.
Still no sign of the actual 4G standard.
in case of massive power outage that knocks out towers
Wonder what the ping times between LA to NY would be like on a LTE peer to peer network... lets see... what's 2500 miles / 500 meters?
LTE direct sounds like an advertiser's wet dream.
What are the actual benefits to consumers?
Bring on the MITM attacks!
so is this some real feat or only smelly feet?
What's in this for the NSA, FBI and other LEO?
Will the phone owner be able to turn it off?
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
Sounds great. It's a shame that it will get used in the wrong way. Businesses will locate you, spew disgusting shit on you and you will have to pay to locate a friend to talk to.
Once there was private peer-to-peer radio. It was called "Ham Radio". But the companies couldn't charge for it, so they made the radios always work through their base stations and called it "Cellular Radio". And of course they removed the peer-to-peer function.
But wait, now it's back! (in a way that can be monetised of course).
peer to peer communication during extended blackouts? File transfer? gaming? video chat?
So now we have to turn off our phones too if we don't want companies to follow us in their stores? We solved this for WiFi (random MAC addresses), I do hope they will solve it for LTE before it's implemented.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
or will the network operators (what of those networks will I rely on when I call my neighbour?) find an excuse to charge for this feature, too?
You're still using their carrier wave. They can still turn off the signal at anytime. But you can still play Tetris...
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
So if I get this right you can have two phones communicate directly over LTE. In a couple of years time we will have these old LTE Direct capable phones just lying around doing nothing. To me that is the most awesome backbone of a decentralised wireless internet ever! Way way higher speeds then wifi, longer distance and built with hardware we would have otherwise discarded!
http://shadowrun.wikia.com/wiki/Matrix
does this mean I need to buy an iPhone7 to get this feature?
But only with people close enough to walk over and talk face to face.
So this is in effect, a way of bypassing the carriers? If not, then would we need to have Verizon, AT&T, Sprint and T-mobile branded LTE-Direct spots?
I sure see this as a way for warehouse-like stores like Ikea and Costco to offer cell services and have a captive portal for web users (and potentially voice users as well - ugh).
But what is preventing a rogue actor from setting up their own LTE direct hotspots and MITM-ing a large group's entire communications? Especially if said actor were doing so with tacit approval from the carriers?
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
As if that matters! Have you seen a lawn full of teenagers? They'll talk about one thing while texting the same person about another. They also keep trampling my azaleas...
They also keep trampling my azaleas...
Iggy Azalea is so last week.
LTE devices exist by the virtue of the big 3? cell phone companies in America. Features of LTE, which do not involve connecting to a big 3 cell phone company network, are irrelevant to me,.
For the general public, there is wifi, which can be connected by ethernet, in its copper, fiber optic forms.
It's a way to charge people for using CB radio and walkie talkies.
Yes, because p2p comm during extended blackouts is trivially easy to maintain in the face of depleting battery power (Also, extended blackouts are oh-so-common in modern life). File transfers? Don't we already have a tech called bluetooth for that?
How are you paying for it?
Also I see this as a way of joining my home network with a friends a couple of houses away without buying any new equipment.....
Soon LTE will be used to hook into the nanochips that were planted in our brains by the US government. Have you received a flu vaccine in the last 2 years?
The CIA will soon be able to force African-Americans to smoke crack, riot, and hate white people. Don't let President Obama turn you into a bunch of mindless, violent animals that are incapable of speaking American English. Fight back against Barack "Uncle Ruckus" Obama while you still can!
Don't let him manipulate you with this LTE Upgrade.
On an unrelated note, here is a funny joke:
What is long and hard on a black person?
The third grade.
How do you propose it gets around blackouts? If it did you would have the entire epicenter relying on fringe cell phones for service. It's like having an entire town piggy backing on a handful connections. Those who are in range will have their batteries toasted before you could say YouTube.
A loop, by its nature, continues. If that didn't make sense, start reading this sentence again.
Peers with spectrum licences only. Move along ...
From TFA:
> LTE Direct uses licensed spectrum, allowing mobile operators to employ it as a way to offer a range of differentiated applications
> and services to users.
Time flies like an arrow -- Fruit flies like a banana
aka 5G, kind of. They've been talking about solving 5G this way for a while.
500 meters in a terremote, or other disaster, could be a long perilous walk, and LTE Direct could save lives.
The benefit I see isn't during blackouts but rather as a one hop extension. In a small town you might walk around a corner and be in radio shadow form the cell tower. With LTE Direct you can temporarily use someone else as an extender until you are out of the shadow.
It might not always work but it is still better than the current system.
Also, imagine a school, anything from college down to elementary, there are plenty of messages being sent there. The persons communicating might be in opposite ends of a building, but still within radio range.
Just a heads up. I just heard that the new phones will be totally free of security bugs. Hence there will be no risk of a worm that propagates directly from phone to phone.
You heard it here first folks! There is absolutely no risk of a worm or other kind of security issue associated with LTE direct!
*groans*
peer to peer communication during extended blackouts? File transfer? gaming? video chat?
Don't forget fast Malware propagation, and easier access to tasty celebrity nude selfies.
Seriously, I don't want anything to do with this tech. Well, at least for my personal phone, I'm sure I'll get a device to be used for fucking with other people though.
For the children!
If they are the exact same thing then stop whining about it and continue to use your CB radio and walkie talkies. The evil cell phone companies are not going to take those away from you.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Never. They always get off my lawn.
Don't we already have a tech called bluetooth for that?
Bluetooth doesn't handle phone-calls or SMS. That and that it's generally just a goddam trainwreck - I admit that, on occasion, it will actually work.
The nearest thing I know of is the Serval project.
On my old 1995 Nokia, there was a Push To Talk function that used a little known option of the GSM protocol. But of course the provider disabled that function in the phone it 'offered' with the contract, since you didn't need to pay them if you used it. Is that function somewhat similar ?
Non-Linux Penguins ?
Don't worry, as long as cellphone network owners don't have a way to charge you for something your and your friends devices do with eachothers this won't get to any phone that you can use in any network.
If anything this would make their "job" harder. Kinda hard to just listen in on something from the network when the call doesn't go through the network.
Right now, this is happening in Hong Kong:
In Hong Kong, pro-democracy demonstrators are looking for new ways to communicate.
News about the protests in Hong Kong have been suppressed in mainland China, where the picture sharing site Instagram has been blocked. Messages posted to Sina Weibo, a Chinese microblogging site similar to Twitter, are being blocked in far greater numbers than normal. And on Sunday, rumours reportedly circulated that the authorities in Hong Kong might shut down the city's cellular networks.
In response, a different type of social network has come to the fore. The Firechat app allows smartphone users to talk to one another "off-the-grid", in the absence of a mobile signal or access to the internet. By making use of Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, messages are spread in a daisy chain fashion, jumping from one user to the next. The system is particularly effective when large numbers of people are congregated together - like at a music festival, or a political protest.
Micha Benoliel, CEO of Open Garden, the firm that makes the app, tells BBC Trending there has been a huge surge in downloads from Hong Kong, as more than 100,000 new accounts have been created in less than 24 hours. Usage spiked during protests in Taiwan and Iran earlier this year, but never before on this scale, says Benoliel.
Inside the app discussions are arranged either according to theme, or how close you are to other users. At one point on Sunday 33,000 people in Hong Kong were using the app at the same time.
Source: http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-...
Cryonics - Keep cool and carry on.
And then again, it may explain why my phone connections suck for the last couple days after my update.
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
Yes, because p2p comm during extended blackouts is trivially easy to maintain in the face of depleting battery power (Also, extended blackouts are oh-so-common in modern life). File transfers? Don't we already have a tech called bluetooth for that?
Fucking luddites on a tech site.
Yes, we have wifi, and bluetooth, and whatever, but LTE could be a technology to rule them all. Imagine having one protocol that could scale from pico home sites to nationwide networks. Having your phone connected to a home LTE hotspot that sits on your free fast wired internet connection, that then seemlessly hands over when you leave the house to standard mobile comms, or does P2P when you're physically near someone and need a photo or video from their device. We could do away with a whole bunch of different technologies potentially and replace them with one overarching wireless protocol that is better than them all.
Now make Me a liar....
But this will definetely blow to our face in the matter of privacy and such.
I know, I know, what hasn't?
But these are precisely the kinda tech, that I'd love to see, without "unforeseen" ShellShock bugs.
So, make it slow, what I mean by that, is take those extra 2 weeks for develops and tech guys, and make it safe for God's sake.
After the marketing idiots, I mean people, have their way, the game is over.
There where two words on this post, pick yer own.
Not to mention a replacement for WLAN. I would expect that eFDD17 (700 MHz) band would be far better at going through my brick walls into the basement than my current 5GHz wlan router.
Just another 3GPP vendor tryhard attempt at preventing becoming a big dumb pipe by offering 'differentiated services.' This is something that will be used by no-one voluntarily and will fall into the same bucket as previous failures such as UMA. Give us a break from the frilly nonsense and get back to work on LTE-A with gigabit speeds already.
Providing service in network blackspots comes to mind straight away (for a price of course)
null
At Ericsson, we implemented SMS and voice over bluetooth in 2000. Too bad they cancelled the project.
No doubt the carriers take a dim view of the adoption of protocols and services that bypass their networks.
Actually it sounds like a great place for a black hat to play!
Now celebrating 25 years of pushing location-based services nobody wants!
Chelloveck
I give up on debugging. From now on, SIGSEGV is a feature.
This could allow you to use your phone while inside a blind spot in the cell network. Instead of deploying a microcell tower to cover half a dozen houses in some valley they could just use this.
Which is exactly what I thought, the second I read it. A perfect way to insert yourself in the middle of other people's privileged communications. There is no way in fuck this can't be exploited. Fake certs, sslsniff and I guarantee you we're going to find a whole new realm of exploits, with this.
:-P
I wonder what it says about people like you and me that everyone else posting sees a wonderful opportunity for better networks and we see an obvious security risk?
That's what I need; radiation at full blast an inch from my crotch and my battery life dropping for no reason while someone uses my phone as a relay.
Don't we already have a tech called bluetooth for that?
Bluetooth doesn't handle phone-calls or SMS. That and that it's generally just a goddam trainwreck - I admit that, on occasion, it will actually work.
The nearest thing I know of is the Serval project.
The OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) project had this capability from the start. Their normal setup is a flock of laptops with only wireless comm hardware, all talking to and relaying messages for their neighbors, plus a wired machine somewhere in the area that provides access to the outside world.
Actually, this was the intended "normal" situation back in the ARPAnet era. It didn't make sense to the military funders to rely on a single relay machine that would be an easy target. But suppliers of the commercial Internet never liked the idea, because they've always wanted to charge customers for every device with access. A flock of devices using a single member's Internet access was explicitly banned at first because of this. As they slowly realized that they couldn't continue to hold the Internet back that way, they switched to the approach of software that hands packets to a single router/gateway box, and not directly to any neighbor.
We still see this very clearly with email, which on most customers' gadgets requires sending a message to an email "server" (typically on an ISP's machine), rather than directly to the target machine. If members of your family want to send messages to each other's gadgets, do the messages go directly to their machine? Or do they go to an address on some company's machine, which tells the recipient that they have a message? This isn't accidental; it's done that way so that the company has access to all your messages, and you have to continue to pay them or lose the ability to send messages to people within your own household.
This isn't necessarily silly. I live in a house with 3 floors (plus a basement ;-). Such verticaly houses are fairly common here in New England. My wife's "home office" is in the (half-size) top floor, a finished attic actually, and if I'm working a couple of floors lower, messages like "Lunch?" or "Mail's here" are much faster by email or IM than by running up and down stairs. It's often annoying when local IP packet storms (especially at lunch/dinner time) interfere with delivery of such messages. This sort of "insignificant" traffic would work better if the original machine-to-machine design were implemented. But the commercial ISP market would lose if they couldn't charge for (and read) such traffic, so we can expect them to fight it.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
Great, so now advertisers will get to push as much content directly to your phone as they want because you aren't paying your carrier for bandwidth! What could possibly go wrong?
Yes, because p2p comm during extended blackouts is trivially easy to maintain in the face of depleting battery power (Also, extended blackouts are oh-so-common in modern life). File transfers? Don't we already have a tech called bluetooth for that?
Fucking luddites on a tech site.
Yes, we have wifi, and bluetooth, and whatever, but LTE could be a technology to rule them all. Imagine having one protocol that could scale from pico home sites to nationwide networks. Having your phone connected to a home LTE hotspot that sits on your free fast wired internet connection, that then seemlessly hands over when you leave the house to standard mobile comms, or does P2P when you're physically near someone and need a photo or video from their device. We could do away with a whole bunch of different technologies potentially and replace them with one overarching wireless protocol that is better than them all.
When there is a real disaster and a provider (AT&T, Verizon, etc) wants to restore service, they typically bring a tractor trailer full of hardware, a generator, plus a huge mast antenna, all just to serve as a temporary cell site. It's a bit of a stretch to think that a new trick in the LTE protocol will make all of that magically happen between handsets without being a huge drain on each handset (making them die even faster in an area where they probably cant be easily charged). This will be more of a gimmick to let the handset get data from nearby devices, like a dinner menu or a coupon for $1 off dog food (in exchange for some juicy personal data, of course).
Mesh SMS seems like a very useful thing.
How do you propose it gets around blackouts? If it did you would have the entire epicenter relying on fringe cell phones for service. It's like having an entire town piggy backing on a handful connections. Those who are in range will have their batteries toasted before you could say YouTube.
Well, one thing that might help is a "social responsibility" campaign. Publicise the fact that this is an inherent problem, and the solution is for as many people as possible should be prepared with extra batteries; portable battery packs, etc. Explain to people that the system will only work if enough people have the extra power in their pockets to keep the messaging system alive. And that, in an emergency situation, they might avoid using sites like youtube. ;-)
Granted, some people will enjoy leeching off the rest of us. But it's possible that, by calmly explaining the situation to people, most of us will do what it takes to keep the system up and running.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
Also I see this as a way of joining my home network with a friends a couple of houses away without buying any new equipment.....
won't both of you need to buy one of these phones first?
LTL has a range of over a mile. looks like it will supplant alot of cheap walky talkies.
How long before some discovers a major security exploit for this? Considering the carrier's abysmal record for updating software on the mobile, and the "always on" nature of LTE Direct, it will spread like wildfire. Security is already is small enough afterthought in the mobile market place.
How a bout a physical security threat? I don't need anyone driving down my street to be able to tell when my phone is in my house and when it's not.
I don't need another way for marketers to track me through stores, or criminals to stalk me when I am travelling.
The list goes on and on.
This is possibly the worst idea EVER!
And probably still counting against one's data plan, even though it bypasses the cell-towers.
Kind of like now, how they want to deduct minutes from my cell plan when I'm using my home 802.11n wireless to make phone calls through my cell handset.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
New LTE to include crippled Nextel features!
Transmitting uses much more power than receiving. This peer-to-peer method may play havoc with battery life in a weak cell reception area. I hope they are considering that ramification in the design and metering of the service. How much traffic should one phone carry and how does it benefit the phone holder? Perhaps a credit scheme for carrying traffic?
Invenio via vel creo
Existing cell technology does not support proper authentication. Your mobile device is authenticated, but cell towers are assumed to be trusted and you have no control over what you connect to. This allows all kinds of Man in the Middle attacks, where one could pretend to be a cell tower and capture traffic.
Hypothetical example - you are standing next to a cartoon robber with a big black box called "FAKE CELL TOWER". The only way you could prevent your smartphone from getting connected to this device is to turn data off. Once you connect, attackers can push fake app updates, inject exploits into your browsing, inspect your unencrypted traffic, try to get you accept compromised certificates, redirect your traffic and so on.
And this is why I am not excited about LTE direct.
Honestly, I'm kind of surprised the powers that be let this one through.
military is constantly struggling to maintain cell networks and comms in war zones. this is a good tech for soldiers in the field that need to share intel.
My God can beat up your God. Just kidding...don't take offense. I know there's no God.
Correction....
LTE Direct as a way to allow companies to automatically discover nearby people, businesses, and your information.... to sell more stuff to you.
Not so much consumer, but individual benefits include:
Being able to communicate with outside world even if the government were to shut down cell towers and internet during protests. See Iran Protests, Eqyptian Protests, Hong Kong Protest and BO's executive order that allows for it in US.
ideal for firechat (reference to the app used in HK right now)
Let's hope this allows for direct, cellphone-to-cellphone communication. Not only is that useful in itself, having it as a feature would mean that outdated cell phones could take on a new life as personal communication devices for family picnics and the like. Reuse is one way to reduce waste.
You're retarded. You're using your anti-capitalism view of the world to try and explain how this are or come to be. How do computers talk on a subnet? Directly. How do computers talk to computers further away? Through a gateway. Is the gateway a single device? Not always. Same with email servers. My company doesn't have just one email server, or even two. They aren't even at a single location. Same with the authentication servers used to verify my account. Your totally fucked in life, because your would view, impacts how you see and study other things in such a way that it reinforces itself and prevents learning and understand. /.ERS are dumber after reading your posts.
One might be able to create an ad-hoc mesh network to extend range...
Greed is the root of all evil.
You would be better off buying $150 worth of equipment than tying up two cell phones with monthly fees to connect two separate networks.
"Disabled on US Carriers until they find a way to make data sent via LTE Direct count against your data cap."
Wouldn't surprise me, anyway.
Don't you have a lawn to tend to?
Man, this would be awesome for cruise ships if you could simply text your friends to see if they want to meet up without having to pay $6 a minute for roaming charges or leave post-it notes on doors.
That would be an interesting application, but I doubt the carriers are going to hand over sufficient control to implement that.
TFS and TFA say 'up to' 500 meters.
that sits on your free fast wired internet connection
WTF, Are you on crack or something?
since when is anyone's 'Wired' internet "Fast" let alone "Free"?
Same old trick by the telcos... They wont upgrade/add towers so now they will leach off customers 'paid' bandwidth to server other customers so they can keep over-subscribing and taking our money and not have to upgrade anything.
Which is also why are so-called 'free' (your words) wired internet is not 'fast' (again, your words)
I'm paying for service for 'me' if someone else is bouncing though my service I better get a discount or they can pay me. (these are not free services, we PAY for them!)
You always need to consider the extremes. What happens when there are thousands of devices in range?
Exactly, why can't we transfer files with our faces, like in the good ol' days!
If you're that close, the existing bluetooth and WiFi should be able to manage nicely.
..and extra charges from carriers for unintended usage. Because either A) this 'feature' will be enabled by default yet carriers will be unable to differentiate your usage from another device's piggybacking data or B) you'll be charged a fee to be ALLOWED to use this feature when you actually need it, just like enabling wifi hotspots and tethering on certain carriers even when it's a hardware function of your device.
that sits on your free fast wired internet connection
WTF, Are you on crack or something?
since when is anyone's 'Wired' internet "Fast" let alone "Free"?
Well, I should have said 'unmetered'. Wired will always have the potential to be faster than wireless, and in any civilised country with a functioning telecoms market it will be.
Same old trick by the telcos... They wont upgrade/add towers
You are aware of physics aren't you? You can't just keep adding cell towers, there's a limit to how closely you can put them together. The wireless bandwidth will always be restricted nomatter how much money you throw at it.
Maybe I'm reading this wrong but I read this as no different to wifi or bluetooth. you would have two devices talking over LTE - towers (and hence registatration on a network and monthly fees) not required.
It's at least free for "Up to 5 Mbps download & 1 Mbps upload speed" in Google Fiber areas. They list $300 construction fee, but I thought that was actually being waived.
The increased connectivity during a disaster is a minor side-effect. You'll be able to use your phone in large buildings with poor connectivity, which is the major reason people will want this.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
It's not a point to point version of LTE but a way for devices to discover nearby devices. They broadcast a 128 bit ID of some kind on the LTE physical layer which is directly received by devices within 500m, but the data communication is still over a paid, bandwidth capped, tower based LTE plan.
In a disaster, LTE-Direct will most likely NOT be available. For both regulatory and
other important business reasons each mobile station will have obtain on-going permission
from the network to communicate directly with another mobile station. They must
first send their GPS location to an authorization service which will make sure they
are both in a zone authorized for LTE-Direct and other conditions such as subscription
plan etc. are met. This authorization handshake with the network will then repeat
every so often with a configured time interval or once per when a certain volume of data
has been transferred between stations.
In a disaster chances are this authorization service will not be reachable
and LTE-Direct connections will not be attempted by mobile stations unless somebody
went and modified the radio firmware.
Ostensibly we are architecting it this way to make sure we can always meet regulatory
requirements (for example what happens when one or more mobile stations leaves a service provider's
area or crosses an international border).
But in reality this is for having a kill-switch and for logging LTE-Direct sessions both for billing
and law enforcement.
On top of that it will be very likely that you will not have direct access to LTE-Direct in your apps.
Most likely this will need a special permission for LTE-Direct given to apps which the networks will
only give to apps coming from their preferred partners. Your networked tetris game will most
likely not receive this permission unless you're in the club and to paraphrase George Carlin
you ain't in that club.
If you consider it and think it through, LTE-Direct will be of little to no benefit to you at all, little
munchkins.
...daisy-chaining via three-way calling? Consider the possibilities.
Presumably given enough coverage of 500m phones, no towers would be necessary at all with the right software... That is so long as you can communicate with the nearest 500m LTE phone, it could potentially pass it on to the rest of the network... Of course there would be issues with the organization of such a network in a distributed fashion and performance issues when you have someone important being the only link between many users and a single phone trying to handle more transmission than it can handle.
It would be an interesting thing to try, particularly in a dense city. It could also work forming small networks anywhere really, given the phones, people, and proximity..