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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.
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!
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?
Well that depends on what you mean by "local". Here's a break down a couple different ways, starting with millions of people affected: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_major_power_outages
You have the right to remain sentient. If you give up the right to remain sentient, you will be elected to public office
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?
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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...
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
500 meters in a terremote, or other disaster, could be a long perilous walk, and LTE Direct could save lives.
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.
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.
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.
Actually it sounds like a great place for a black hat to play!
Actually what he wrote was fine; he stated there wasn't seamless coverage across the entirety of North America, not just west of the Mississippi. Suggesting that areas east of the river were also problematic despite their general higher population density.
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.
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).
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
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.
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