AT&T pilots dedicated IoT mobile network

AT&T will pilot a dedicated mobile network solely for the internet of things next month in San Francisco. The telecom giant will run the special and separate LTE-M network in the city in November and use it to connect everything from smart meters to alarm systems to vending machines. It has signed up a number of companies …

[Kevin McMurtrie]

Your world delivered... to us

What the hell is "carrier-grade security" on AT&T's network? This is the network charging extra fees to opt-out of AT&T marketing spying. This is the network delivering all data to the NSA for government spying.

[Version 1.0]

Re: Your world delivered... to us

""carrier-grade security" "

It's just a marketing term - they probably ROT13 the data.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Your world delivered... to us

Quadruple rounds of ROT-13

[kain preacher]

Means not using yahoo for the email hosting company.

[Version 1.0]

DEFCON 2017 anyone?

This sounds like a convenient attack vector to me - I can't wait to see someone jackpot a Pepsi machine.

[JeffyPoooh]

For self-driving cars?

The proponents of self-driving cars are always making hand-wavy claims about how cooperative behavior will enable all the claimed advantages.

Is this the communications network they'll use?

Another $100+ monthly communications bill for each vehicle?

[Steve Knox]

If your IoT things...

are using > 1GB per month, you have far too many IoT things and they are far too inefficient.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: If your IoT things...

1GB is nothing. Think of all the audio which needs to be uploaded to the "cloud" for voice recognition.

[druck]

Re: If your IoT things...

IOT devices needing their own cell connection such as smart meters, shouldn't be using over 1GB a month. Voice recognition devices should be using WiFi and a land line. But what does LTE-M offer for the extra cost over the standard network? Guaranteed QOS? Other magic fairy dust?

Or is this just another way of screwing the users of smart meters, not only do you have to pay for the meter itself, but now have the cost of a super expensive data connection passed on to you as well.

[Christian Berger]

Re: If your IoT things...

"1GB is nothing. Think of all the audio which needs to be uploaded to the "cloud" for voice recognition."

The standard for sending compressed voice to a central server is 4800 bits per second. 600 Bytes per second. So a Gigabyte will last for 20.7 days of uninterrupted voice.

(Those 4800 bits are not meant to be turned back into voice, but instead the output of the first stage of the voice recognition.)

[leexgx]

Re: If your IoT things...

the price i would expect will be for all the sim devices as most IoT things don't need much data (it be like 100 devices per account or more especially with smart meters for example they only need to send once per day there meter reading unless they want more real time use, say solar system )

i can get £0.07 per 1MB on a M2M sim in the UK (its a any network sim as UK has 3 2G/3G/4G networks and 4th network that has 3G/4G only no 2G fallback) USA only has 2 GSM networks

4G is LTE

[Brad Ackerman]

Re: If your IoT things...

1080p60 traffic cameras would be nice to have—assuming the field is static most of the time so we can get down to 100 kb/s average data rate (SWAG), that's 33 GB/mo/camera.

[MaxFacts]

Carrier Grade Security

AT&T demonstrated carrier grade security on the CBS 60 minutes show in April; at the time they let anyone redirect phone calls and messages using the SS7 network from anywhere on planet without checking with the account holder!

http://www.fiercewireless.com/wireless/report-ss7-still-vulnerable-more-than-a-year-after-hack-first-reported

http://www.fiercewireless.com/wireless/u-s-carriers-mum-60-minutes-report-vulnerability-ss7

[Anonymous Coward]

The Reg appear to have misread or misunderstood the linked pricing announcement.

It's $25 for 1 GB valid for up to 12 months. Good luck finding a cheaper consumer facing price plan which will give you a data service for only about $2/month. As the other comment notes, most IoT devices simply don't need that much data - so this is actually priced pretty well for them.

[Anonymous Coward]

And, as I read it, it is for 1000 devices. In other words, for $25 you can connect 1000 devices using up to 1GB in total, for 12 months. Just the provisioning costs are probably a big part of that!