Andrew McGlashan wrote:
LTE needs to be supported on many different frequencies as you say. Some radio / chipsets though .... are "programmable", so that they can support more of a range -- switchable by software settings; I can't find the reference now though, but I don't think any currently available phone has this feature.
I was wondering about this -- why can't phone transceivers just switch frequency? I built an FM receiver from a kit once, and you changed frequency by screwing an iron core into a wound wire coil. If you screwed it past the radio stations you could get the telly audio. The only reason I can think of that a cellphone's transceiver couldn't do the same thing, is 1) the FCC are scared of consumers using (pre-built) programmable transceivers to "shoot down planes and stuff"; and 2) it'd cost the hardware vendor an extra twenty cents per unit.
I expect that we'll keep seeing new phones, and we'll keep needing to replace them just for the radio capability, if nothing else is important enough.
Given that a smartphone is basically an ordinary computer and a completely separate black box transceiver that you talk flipping AT over serial to, maybe they should just made that a removable module, like the nonvolatile storage.
And of course the whole NSA set of problems is something else to consider. Perhaps we need to switch over to Firefox Mobile OS. Android has it's problems as does iOS ... need I say more?
I'm not sure I trust MoCo much more -- they're on Google's payroll, after all. They're also working for Turkish intelligence: http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/Papers/sefa-pr11.pdf (p.2)
My solution to the problem is simple, use a separate radio that does nothing more than provide data, absolutely nothing more than a secure hotspot -- possibly better if via Tor as well. Then use a phone device that can use fully encrypted comms, end to end. Get the best phone that can support this setup and never use it as a /normal/ mobile.
Just to double-check - you're talking about an LTE-to-802.11 bridge, not a femtocell?