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Cellular modems seem unlikely, because both they and the service plan they'd need are too expensive to be justified by any benefit to the manufacturer.
by nickff 18d ago
Cellular modems seem unlikely, because both they and the service plan they'd need are too expensive to be justified by any benefit to the manufacturer.
- AlexandrB 18d agoYes. Considering 90%+ of users will just connect their TV to their WiFi, shipping a cell modem with every TV to catch that last 10% seems like bad ROI. I could however see this happening in the future in response to regulation. For example some "think of the children" rule that makes TV makers responsible for blocking mature content.
- drdexebtjl 18d agoPhones already have modems that do Wi-Fi, cellular and Bluetooth in a single chip. It may at some point no longer be economical to manufacture a Wi-Fi only modem.
- TheJCDenton 18d agoNot so far fetched when your advertising revenue is in the tens of millions of dollars. They just need this revenue by tv to be higher than the price of the mobile plan per tv. For a few Gb per month it may be relevant in the not so distant future.
- bluGill 18d agoCell plans are very cheap when you are a company looking for low bandwidth off-peak service for a lot of devices. As individuals you can't get those deals, but companies can. I don't know if TVs have a cell modem, but it isn't unreasonable to say they could. As a different poster mentioned, the FCC needs to know about this though and so it will be documented.
- tshaddox 18d agoI doubt the modem would cost more than $5 at scale. No idea what sort of off peak data deals you could get at scale but I have to imagine it’s close to being feasible.
- mitxela 17d agoYou can get special IoT cellphone plans in bulk for something like $1 per device per month, or even less.