On: Vizio TVs are now showing banner ads over live TV

[Beltalowda]

It's not like 5G will be automatic, right? You'll still need some SIM or auth or whatnot.

[croes → Beltalowda]

Built-In SIM from the manufacturer.

[Beltalowda → croes]

But who will pay for the actual connection? Even in the 5G brave new world it's not going to be free.

[croes → Beltalowda]

They don't need much traffic to send tracking data, so they can get a cheap data plan for the planned life time of the device. They can even add the costs to the price of the device.

[gruez → croes]

But is it really worth paying for the modem/cell service just to get the remaining 1% of users that don't connect to wifi?

[jodrellblank → Beltalowda]

Tesla cars report their state back to Tesla HQ and have done so for years, this is one of the things they were banking on for their self driving work - the ability to train their systems on millions of miles of actual driving data. I don't know who pays for that connection, but they made it work.

Around 2010 the Amazon Kindle 3G with keyboard had a cellular connection for buying books, and it also had an experimentat web browser with worldwide free internet access.

I don't know who pays but it already happens, it's not new to 5G.

[bushbaba → Beltalowda]

The cellular connection might be 'cheap' if the TVs are low bandwidth and easy to de-prioritize. So it's free revenue.

With 5G, they're adding lots of antenna's to boost connectivity. I suspect IOT 5G costs will continually go down over time relative to inflation.

[codezero → Beltalowda]

They’ll use a mesh network to find a cheap path out. Amazon and Apple already have their own and it’s not going to be long before one starts leasing time.

[dymk → Beltalowda]

As long as the ad revenue is higher than the per-month cost of the connection, it's worth it to do