I wonder whether it's better to connect it to a network that is then firewalled off from the internet. That may prevent it from looking for alternatives.

> Only a matter of time before they ship with cell modems

I do wonder about the hackability of this. Will it be a purely telemetry connection or will it be able to stream video via that connection as well? (not that data costs as much these days as it used to). Can we piggy back the rest of our internet data on this connection? LG TV as modem/router?

Will they include GPS, so they can also connect your home address to the profile they're creating on you? Location-specific advertising value would make that answer: yes!

They would probably use a low cost IoT plan, which (without volume discount) is something like $1/mo and a few cents per MB. So they may be able to send content ID info or conversation transcripts, but video would be too expensive unless the user pays.

GPS is probably unnecessary since mobile phones are constantly mapping out WLANs. You can get a decent approximation of GPS with just a wireless scan in most places.

I saw a previous conversation here where someone said they were able to “repurpose” a similar IoT modem to get some free data, but the modern chips are soldered on and tightly integrated, so it would be harder to reuse unless you get root on the device. I think they use eSIMs stored in a secure element in the CPU.

Hard to get a gps fix indoors. My guess is to infer it from OTA tv channel IDs and relative signal strengths. Wouldn’t need a big database and the transmitters don’t move much.

See “datacasting” for data side. Would be 1-way so hard to know how many eye/ear balls get the noise; I mean; ad.