6 ms·

I wonder which smart TV provider will be the first to use this instead of home wifi where people can disable or black hole connectivity.

by mfer 5y ago

pokoleo 5y ago
Some smart TVs already ship with sim cards. It just requires a deal with AT&T/Tmo/etc.
pantulis 5y ago
Don't think that's the use case. how would AWS deploy a base station to my home? But you have a real point, and AWS already solved that with the 3G enabled Kindles by having carrier agreements. Why not doing that with Smart TVs?
- vxNsr 5y ago
  > But you have a real point, and AWS already solved that with the 3G enabled Kindles by having carrier agreements. Amazon regretted that pretty soon after they did it, people hacked their kindles to be hotspots and it became an arms race amazon didn't wanna play.
  - jjoonathan 5y ago
    Was that a big problem? I thought it was a single-intern sized problem.
    - kfarr 5y ago
      Yeah tbh not hard to search for high bandwidth users abusing system and dealing with it on a case by case basis
  - cptskippy 5y ago
    5G E2E Slicing will prevent such scenarios. The SIM will be bound to a network slice and restrictions will be dictated by the carrier.
- Turing_Machine 5y ago
  > Don't think that's the use case. how would AWS deploy a base station to my home? Unless I'm misunderstanding how this works, it wouldn't need a base station in your home, just a commodity cellular modem with a network-specific SIM, and an uplink tower somewhere within range.
  - jareklupinski 5y ago
    yup, the only thing in the past that was keeping companies from popping a sim into every product to report back home (above a certain price) was that there was nothing stopping you from pulling the sim and just using their plan in other devices, at least for a short while until the company realized what was up (if they cared to check (they usually didnt)) now they have complete control over the end-to-end, and can cheaply provision sims that only talk to their local tower for example, and reject non-company provisioned IMEI (if they need it anymore?) etc working on building blocking for this :)
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
- vishnugupta 5y ago
  > how would AWS deploy a base station to my home? The TV company will deploy base station(s) in my town. Embed SIM cards in TVs they ship. No need to connect to my home WiFi to send personalised data back to their servers, or to upgrade firmware etc.,
  - judge2020 5y ago
    DirecTV already does this for their 'wireless' offering - you get a huge LTE modem and a bunch of receivers with sim cards in them.
  - tenebrisalietum 5y ago
    It may interest you to know ATSC 3.0 has specifications for a "return path" to the broadcast station in it.
paxys 5y ago
What does a smart TV have to do with a private 5G network? People just upvote any meaningless comment on this site as long as it sounds mildly controversial.
- VRay 5y ago
  Smart TVs scan what's on the screen to get data on what people are watching and sell that data to anyone who wants it The idea is to make sure they can keep that data flowing even if someone intentionally disconnects the TV from the internet
  - paxys 5y ago
    So they can (and sometimes already do) insert a SIM card in the TV and use any of the consumer 4G/LTE/5G networks out there which your phone connects to. Why are people hypothesizing that Vizio will ship a $250K 5G base station to your house?
    - hirako2000 5y ago
      because if setting up private 5G networks becomes cheaper and open to any business then the chance TV manufacturers consider putting 5G base near enough your house.
      - midasuni 5y ago
        But it’s cheaper and easier to just embed a normal 4g modem and SIM card
        ahaseeb 5y ago
        Every device will have 5G instead of Wifi. Remember Wifi dongles ?
- throw10920 5y ago
  "Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading." - The Hacker News Guidelines (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) Given that there's an extremely simple and straightforward answer to your question (smart TV manufacturers sell data obtained from spying on users, and they need a way to get that data from the TV to their servers), I would encourage you to give some thought before making such an empty and vapid comment about voting habits on HN.
ArchOversight 5y ago
Amazon Sidewalk is already available...
anchpop 5y ago
I don’t think enough people use pihole for smart TV manufacturers to care, and encrypted DNS breaks that anyway so setting up a 5G base station in your house would be overkill
KoftaBob 5y ago
This is a platform AWS is providing to make it easier for those who have private 5G networks to run/maintain those networks. You seem to be interpreting this as "AWS is going to put 5G towers everywhere and smart TVs are going to connect to them to send data they collect!". That's not what this is at all. This is one of the many reasons it's beneficial to read the actual article/post and comprehend the information, rather than reflexively reacting to keywords you notice in the title.
- fault1 5y ago
  Exactly, it's more of a b2c thing. Actually in one of my previous gigs (at a energy company that had oil rigs in very remote areas), they wanted to quicken the provisioning of 5g to some of the places they operate in. AWS was one of the companies they were negotiating with - I never realized they had not yet announced this service.
KallDrexx 5y ago
They don't need this for that. Instead they are using rings and echo devices that allow devices to connect and send small data out. You can't black hole them without black holing the ring/echos (making them useless). You can disable this feature but it's opt-out, and it may just connect to your neighbor's instead. I dont' remember the exact feature name though.
- treesknees 5y ago
  I believe you're referring to Amazon Sidewalk. It's more for their own devices like cameras and not for TV ad tracking (at least for now.) https://www.amazon.com/Amazon-Sidewalk/ https://www.amazon.com/Amazon-Sidewalk/
  - KallDrexx 5y ago
    Yeah that's it, but on the blog post at https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/devices/introducing-amazon-sidewalk https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/devices/introducing-amazon-... they say > For device makers, we plan to publish protocols that any manufacturer can use to build reliable, low-power, low-cost devices that benefit from access to long-range, low-bandwidth wireless connections. In the meantime, you can sign up to be notified when more information is available. So the intention is definitely there that device manufacturers can pay to delvier data over the network.
jeffwask 5y ago
I immediately thought of alarm companies like ADT or Vivant who I believe currently partner with cellular providers for access. How much cheaper would it be to swap to 5G as a service versus whatever their current cost model is.
bob1029 5y ago
One response to this problem is to perform mild electronics surgery and install fine copper mesh around anything that looks like it moves electrons as part of its normal function. It really doesn't take a whole lot to completely fuck up an RF signal. Alternatively, you could maybe do the same to your drywall if you are looking at new home construction... If every room is effectively a faraday cage, you are back in control over what can talk to what on a much more granular level. This clearly creates challenges for your own wireless/mobile signals, but presumably you also have the ability to hardwire additional access points if you are going to this extent.

I wonder which smart TV provider will be the first to use this instead of home wifi where people can disable or black hole connectivity.

by mfer 5y ago

I wonder which smart TV provider will be the first to use this instead of home wifi where people can disable or black hole connectivity.

pokoleo 5y ago

Some smart TVs already ship with sim cards. It just requires a deal with AT&T/Tmo/etc.

pantulis 5y ago

Don't think that's the use case. how would AWS deploy a base station to my home? But you have a real point, and AWS already solved that with the 3G enabled Kindles by having carrier agreements. Why not doing that with Smart TVs?

vxNsr 5y ago
> But you have a real point, and AWS already solved that with the 3G enabled Kindles by having carrier agreements. Amazon regretted that pretty soon after they did it, people hacked their kindles to be hotspots and it became an arms race amazon didn't wanna play.
- jjoonathan 5y ago
  Was that a big problem? I thought it was a single-intern sized problem.
  - kfarr 5y ago
    Yeah tbh not hard to search for high bandwidth users abusing system and dealing with it on a case by case basis
- cptskippy 5y ago
  5G E2E Slicing will prevent such scenarios. The SIM will be bound to a network slice and restrictions will be dictated by the carrier.
Turing_Machine 5y ago
> Don't think that's the use case. how would AWS deploy a base station to my home? Unless I'm misunderstanding how this works, it wouldn't need a base station in your home, just a commodity cellular modem with a network-specific SIM, and an uplink tower somewhere within range.
- jareklupinski 5y ago
  yup, the only thing in the past that was keeping companies from popping a sim into every product to report back home (above a certain price) was that there was nothing stopping you from pulling the sim and just using their plan in other devices, at least for a short while until the company realized what was up (if they cared to check (they usually didnt)) now they have complete control over the end-to-end, and can cheaply provision sims that only talk to their local tower for example, and reject non-company provisioned IMEI (if they need it anymore?) etc working on building blocking for this :)
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
vishnugupta 5y ago
> how would AWS deploy a base station to my home? The TV company will deploy base station(s) in my town. Embed SIM cards in TVs they ship. No need to connect to my home WiFi to send personalised data back to their servers, or to upgrade firmware etc.,
- judge2020 5y ago
  DirecTV already does this for their 'wireless' offering - you get a huge LTE modem and a bunch of receivers with sim cards in them.
- tenebrisalietum 5y ago
  It may interest you to know ATSC 3.0 has specifications for a "return path" to the broadcast station in it.

paxys 5y ago

What does a smart TV have to do with a private 5G network? People just upvote any meaningless comment on this site as long as it sounds mildly controversial.

VRay 5y ago
Smart TVs scan what's on the screen to get data on what people are watching and sell that data to anyone who wants it The idea is to make sure they can keep that data flowing even if someone intentionally disconnects the TV from the internet
- paxys 5y ago
  So they can (and sometimes already do) insert a SIM card in the TV and use any of the consumer 4G/LTE/5G networks out there which your phone connects to. Why are people hypothesizing that Vizio will ship a $250K 5G base station to your house?
  - hirako2000 5y ago
    because if setting up private 5G networks becomes cheaper and open to any business then the chance TV manufacturers consider putting 5G base near enough your house.
    - midasuni 5y ago
      But it’s cheaper and easier to just embed a normal 4g modem and SIM card
      - ahaseeb 5y ago
        Every device will have 5G instead of Wifi. Remember Wifi dongles ?
throw10920 5y ago
"Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading." - The Hacker News Guidelines (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) Given that there's an extremely simple and straightforward answer to your question (smart TV manufacturers sell data obtained from spying on users, and they need a way to get that data from the TV to their servers), I would encourage you to give some thought before making such an empty and vapid comment about voting habits on HN.

ArchOversight 5y ago

Amazon Sidewalk is already available...

anchpop 5y ago

I don’t think enough people use pihole for smart TV manufacturers to care, and encrypted DNS breaks that anyway so setting up a 5G base station in your house would be overkill

KoftaBob 5y ago

This is a platform AWS is providing to make it easier for those who have private 5G networks to run/maintain those networks. You seem to be interpreting this as "AWS is going to put 5G towers everywhere and smart TVs are going to connect to them to send data they collect!". That's not what this is at all. This is one of the many reasons it's beneficial to read the actual article/post and comprehend the information, rather than reflexively reacting to keywords you notice in the title.

fault1 5y ago
Exactly, it's more of a b2c thing. Actually in one of my previous gigs (at a energy company that had oil rigs in very remote areas), they wanted to quicken the provisioning of 5g to some of the places they operate in. AWS was one of the companies they were negotiating with - I never realized they had not yet announced this service.

KallDrexx 5y ago

They don't need this for that. Instead they are using rings and echo devices that allow devices to connect and send small data out. You can't black hole them without black holing the ring/echos (making them useless). You can disable this feature but it's opt-out, and it may just connect to your neighbor's instead. I dont' remember the exact feature name though.

treesknees 5y ago
I believe you're referring to Amazon Sidewalk. It's more for their own devices like cameras and not for TV ad tracking (at least for now.) https://www.amazon.com/Amazon-Sidewalk/ https://www.amazon.com/Amazon-Sidewalk/
- KallDrexx 5y ago
  Yeah that's it, but on the blog post at https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/devices/introducing-amazon-sidewalk https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/devices/introducing-amazon-... they say > For device makers, we plan to publish protocols that any manufacturer can use to build reliable, low-power, low-cost devices that benefit from access to long-range, low-bandwidth wireless connections. In the meantime, you can sign up to be notified when more information is available. So the intention is definitely there that device manufacturers can pay to delvier data over the network.

jeffwask 5y ago

I immediately thought of alarm companies like ADT or Vivant who I believe currently partner with cellular providers for access. How much cheaper would it be to swap to 5G as a service versus whatever their current cost model is.

bob1029 5y ago

One response to this problem is to perform mild electronics surgery and install fine copper mesh around anything that looks like it moves electrons as part of its normal function. It really doesn't take a whole lot to completely fuck up an RF signal. Alternatively, you could maybe do the same to your drywall if you are looking at new home construction... If every room is effectively a faraday cage, you are back in control over what can talk to what on a much more granular level. This clearly creates challenges for your own wireless/mobile signals, but presumably you also have the ability to hardwire additional access points if you are going to this extent.