I worry about things like "improved" 5G technologies that let devices create their own connections. search for 5g miot or 5g redcap

more devices over time are getting plain cellular connections, let alone these newer cheaper versions.

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jmward01 a day ago | parent | next [-]

Just shows how much you are worth as a product to them, and how little competition is in the cell market, that all these devices can get lifetime cell connections while we are paying, how much a month? Actually, lawsuits about privacy for devices like this should quote how much the infrastructure costs are to support their tech. The network, services, people, etc are all a good estimate of actual value, in dollars, they are deriving from selling you as a product.

	▲	zamadatix a day ago \| parent [-]
		We use a crap ton of calls/sms/data over the same period, expect decent QoS on well performing bands, and have a TON more customer management and onboarding overheard over the same 5-10 year period. Meanwhile devices with embedded telemetry might get a plan as low as 500 MB total over 10 years and have hundreds of thousands in a single sale with no customer support overheard, SIM reactivation on new phones, etc. Are you getting as good a deal? No, probably not, but trying to compare them to the cellular service you pay for is problematic in many ways. You too can get a $14 10 year prepaid plan from 1NCE for your Pi to send sensor telemetry from on occasion if that's what you want instead of "normal" cell service. I wouldn't mind companies having to disclose everything and anything about the telemetry they collect though. Just putting the dollar figure on it is unlikely to shock anyone as it is low for you to do the same thing too.

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wolvoleo a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Yes or Amazon sidewalk. Also "great" as an unauthorized side channel exfiltration path.

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mindslight a day ago | parent | prev [-]

Follow the example of how buying a Linux PC works. Look at popular brands where there are vibrant online communities of people neutralizing the surveillance / control bits - pulling out the 5G modems and whatnot. It's possible manufacturers will eventually arrive at using all-in-one integrated chipset where you can't just disconnect a daughterboard or scratch the appropriate traces to a radio chip, but we're so far from that.

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kotaKat 17 hours ago | parent [-]

Bad news: we're actually closer than you'd think to that, considering how many cellular modems on their own are full blown SOC stacks and how far we've gotten into the eSIM camp.

	▲	mindslight 13 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Cell modems are their own SOCs, but are their application processors being used to implement the main functionality of the TV? Maybe they are, with Android UIs and whatnot? I actually don't have any "smart" TVs (main TV is a 43 inch monitor driven directly by Kodi), so I'm still picturing the car model where there is a separate component that does WAN communications, and the software developers made the system tolerant of it being disconnected (for development ease and also resiliency to failures). But maybe my model is horribly wrong for TVs.