[32032141]

I've been wondering for a while what the purpose of all the NB band LTE stuff is even for. The going rate is often around 40c/MB in most countries (lower on Twilio by the looks of it, but the same order of magnitude), which seems like there's some very specific high value-per-byte application intended. Some of the technologies people are touting for very long battery life have transmission latencies of 10+ seconds as a trade off, which makes the applications for it even more restricted.

It feels like the result is going to be that literally every device you can purchase will have a always connected LTE lojack attached. Imagine trying to firewall or restrict the network in your business when literally everything has its own backbone, it'll be a complete nightmare.

[walterbell]

There are also LEO satellite networks on the way.

Is it feasible to use physical RF shielding for devices?

[sbr464]

What’s interesting is a lot of new IoT devices operate or can fallback to a mesh or gateway mode configuration, for example, a group of common sensors that work together. So you’d potentially need to block Bluetooth, ZigBee, WiFi, LTE/GSM, GPS (messaging over GPS) and others to account for different radio technologies.

[namibj]

Shielding by enough to throw any common network off is certainly feasible. Metallized non-opening windows (reflect IR from the sun to save on HVAC), metal plates or thin meshes on the outer walls and either rotating doors or a combination of rf-absorbing walls and a convoluted path to the inside that prevent radio waves from getting in through the door. I'd assume you can feasibly add 60 dB shielding to a building with that. More is obviously possible, there are conference rooms with advanced shielding of >100dB against industrial espionage. They use fiber optic communication lines to the outside because you want all electrical connections to be very heavily filtered to prevent conducting radio waves through them.

[walterbell]

Thank you! Are materials like these suitable: http://lessemf.com/fabric.html

[nick238]

If you have physical access to the device, it's probably cheaper/easier to modify it, replacing the antenna with a load to ground. And if you're going to do that, you could probably negotiate with the provider to sell you a cheaper one with no LTE radios.

I'm probably thinking of larger B2B though, individuals/SB probably won't have the expertise/influence

[walterbell]

> replacing the antenna with a load to ground.

Would that be sufficient for an iPhone?