LTE's backers vow to KILL OFF WI-FI and BLUETOOTH

Going nowhere fast

I think Bluetooth has been successful by not being all things to all men, eg. working cooperatively with WiFi. Like WiFi it's become so ubiquitous that it's going to be difficult to shift. There are also advantages in having different radios in a device: the Bluetooth one is owned by the device, not the network.

But the more I think about the suggestions the more I think this is a glorified spectrum grab: get LTE in the unlicensed spectrum areas.

PS. Welcome back, Bill

One radio to rule them all...?

In my front room the Wii talks to the world by Wifi, the smart TV talks to the Soundbar via Bluetooth and the Soundbar talks to it's Woofer by a second bluetooth.. So my Phone,Tablet and Laptop all bluetooth enabled can talk to the same soundbar or the bluetooth enabled DAB radio in the kitchen for Spotify\Listen again. or via a couple of bluetooth enabled headphones\earphones kicking about somewhere.

In the rest of the house there are a couple of wifi connected PCs and tablets, a couple of Wifi\bluetooth enabled pinters, another wifi enabled smart TV and a vodafone femtocell lurking in the loft kicking out a nice solid 3g signal.

To keep it all ticking over nicely there are a couple of wifi repeaters plugged in (not ethernet over mains) and for the legacy kit there is an old wfi to Cat5 bridging unit.

OH and I nearly forgot a few 2.4Mhz keyboards mice remote control sockets etc

Whatever the technical merits of LTE (discuss). How much would it cost to junk this lot or how long on a normal replacement cycle to replace it all..

Another 'systemd' moment?

What is it about this human passion for tyranny? Stifling diversity, stomping on creativity, putting the boot on the throat of others and crowing, "I own you, sucker! Now just be good and give me your wallet, your first-born, and your soul".

For some people all that matters is the letter of the law and their stash, and even then the letter of the law better be serving their stash.

pipe dream

I don't know about Europe/US but in NZ and Aussie their just isn't sufficient coverage for such a scheme to work. You're lucky to get 2G out of cities

Bluetooth, really?

If I understand LTE correctly, in order to connect to an LTE network, the device in question needs some authorisation to use that network, in most cases this is the presence of a SIM card with the credentials needed.

Does this mean if I want a hands-free headset, that the headset needs its own SIM card to take a call from my phone?

Hopefully you can turn some of the features off

I hope you can turn the various features on and off individually. I like having separate Bluetooth, WiFi, and GPS chips (well, modules on a SoC) in my phone, not because I use them, rather because I don't and I can turn them off when I don't need them without affecting my ability to send/receive phone calls, email, and the occasional text message.

I used to work in this industry

The sites themselves are owned seperately. The comms over these sites are owned seperately. The government contracts in these services for the blue light network. The service owners also contract out the services to the yellow light companies.

The only time change can or would be made is at government contract renewal time.

This is some years off.

I doubt any company has the will or wherefore to build a competing set of ground sites across the entire UK. The current emergency services network is 99% UK GROUND coverage - NOT just 99% population.

Bluetooth LE (BTLE) not LTE. Please go back and rewrite the Bluetooth section so it makes sense.

Another homogenised attempt to dominate the world

Any communications protocol that uses RF is open to vulnerabilities and the more complex the protocol the larger the attack surface is going to be. Imagine a scenario in a number of years time when LTE is ubiquitous and then someone discovers an unpatchable vulnerability. Yeeha the so called cyber criminals empty everyone's bank account, or a hostile country takes the opportunity to shut everything down and keep it shut down!

If everyone starts wandering about the planet festooned with LTE devices all jabbering away to each other both the spooks and the marketing boys are going to have a field day tracking your every step. This can and already is done with WiFi enabled devices WITHOUT your device even connecting to anything, it just has to be turned on. Your jabbering devices will give away so much info about you despite data being encrypted.

Where critical infrastructure is concerned (such as TETRA) we need heterogeneous systems to prevent a common mode failure that takes everything down. Safety critical system frequently deploy systems designed by different teams in order to avoid common mode failures.

LTE will no doubt infiltrate many aspects of life either by design or simply by reduced cost and become ubiquitous by default.. The ultimate cost to society could me massive, nature abhors homogeneity for good reason.

May the Borg be with you :-)

Bleh

An LTE access point? I'd be interested in this, LTE is (a little) more spectrally efficient than 802.11n, and has actual provisions to coordinate access to the channel (unlike wifi where it's like a free-for-all, and channel access tends to completely go to pieces with multiple devices vying for access to the channel.) Also, I could be wrong, but I suspect LTE speeds would drop of more gradually as the signal degrades; wifi may drop from 130mbps to 78mbps (running the whole channel at a reduced speed), in a condition where LTE could run some subchannels at full speed and others at reduced speeds.

An LTE microcell that just allows access to LAN resources as well? Hell no, the carriers here in the US (except T-Mobile) ALL consider microcell use to be billable usage, even though the microcell is using your own internet connection to provide access (albeit going through the carrier the way it's set up now). I also don't need even more stuff using up the 2.4ghz spectrum, thanks.

LAST DITCH TO EXIST FOR TELECOMS....

this is just olain crap as it it just a way to extend the now limited shelf life of conventional telecoms ...

thetvare doomed ti be exactly what they REALLY ARE, UTILITIES...unless the invent some baroque way to justiffy the enormous complex and bureocratic network infrastructure which has made them so rich by sellinover expensive minutes of voice or SMS ...

THE PARTY IS ENDED, AND THE TELCO ARE DOOMED TO BE UTILITIES, as communications i

hardware is so pervasive that no one in his sane mind would ever allow for a LTE Direct or LTE M to replace a 5 Ghz or WiFi mesh network let alone PAN personal area network tools like BLE , THIS IS EVEN MORE IMPORTANT IN M2M where WirelessMbus or LoRa or a number of very very efficient and inexpensive technologies are INFINITELY BETTER that the obese elephant that LTE REALLY IS...

This is not going to end well as telcos are and will do anything they can to kill cheap massively readily available technology with their absurdly complex and VERY VERY FRAGILE LTE, especially for VoLTE, IMS RCS and all that absurd baroque heap of junk they have been trying to get to work for NEARLY 5 YEARS ....

THEY FORGET ONE THING...TECHNOLOGY IS EVOLUTION, VERY FAST AND IMPOSSIBLE TO CONTAIN...or predict.