Tuesday, April 30, 2019

The Register: It's time to list the five biggest lies about 5G

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It's time to list the five biggest lies about 5G
By Kieren McCarthy in San Francisco, 25 Apr 2019 at 20:12

Let's cut the crap, El Reg style

Comment We thought the hype over next-generation mobile broadband networks couldn't get much thicker, but we were wrong. So let's just jump into the five biggest lies about 5G.

  1. China is using the tech to spy on God-fearing Western nations
  2. There is a "race to 5G"
  3. 5G is ready to go now
  4. 5G is the answer to all our broadband / fast internet needs
  5. Spectrum auctions will solve all the issues

I've been saying some of this for some time now. Especially the first two. I listen to a lot of political news podcasts and people can't stop making insane claims that if Huawei sells a cell tower to Verizon that they will be able to listen in on every conversation and intercept every web session that crosses the tower (or in some more paranoid versions, over Verizon's entire network).

Even if they built in a "send all packets to China" feature, and somehow managed to turn it on without Verizon's NOC noticing that the amount of traffic has instantly doubled, how is this any less secure than using public Wi-Fi in a restaurant? The answer is that it isn't. Which is why every web site and Internet service that cares about security (including your banks, e-mail services and social media sites) use encryption - that little "s" in https: isn't just for decoration.

Sure, maybe the Chinese want to fill their servers with thousands of terabytes of encrypted spam so they can spend the next decade decrypting it in order to learn a secret that, by the time they decode it, will have been all over the New York Times for several years. But I think they have better things to do.

Those people who are likely targets of espionage already need advanced security, with or without 5G. The fact that Huawei makes some equipment used by your cell carrier doesn't magically give them the ability to decrypt all the traffic flowing through that equipment.

That having been said, I am opposed to Huawei selling equipment to the US or anyone else. Not because they're going to take over the world, but simply because they shouldn't be allowed to profit from decades of intellectual property theft and massive government subsidies. Level the playing field by taking those away and I'll be happy to let them (try and) compete against Ericsson and Nokia.

All of that now having been said, there actually is a national security threat from Chinese network equipment like that from Huawei and ZTE. Not that they can intercept the world's communications, but that they could turn it off. They could build a hidden kill switch into their products that would probably not be detected. If a war should break out between China and some other nation, they could trigger that switch, disabling their enemy's entire communication network. I think that threat is plausible and should be taken seriously.

Could Ericsson or Nokia build in a kill switch? Sure they could, but since they are not owned by any government, the odds of them doing it on their own or in response to a government request is far lower than products built by companies that are subject to control by a foreign and hostile government.

Monday, April 29, 2019

Hello World on the Qualcomm QCA4020 developer board

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I have recently started working on an IoT project involving the use of a Qualcomm QCA4020 Development Kit prototype board. The board has many useful features for IoT prototyping, but a clear set of "getting started" instructions is not one of them.

Qualcomm's developer network has published a Hello World demo application, but the procedure is for Windows PCs and I want to use Linux for my development platform. Qualcomm's SDK says that Linux and macOS are supported platforms, but any documentation resembling a tutorial is strictly Windows-based.

This blog post is the procedure I worked out for getting their Hello World demo working using a Linux PC to cross-compile the code and flash the Qualcomm developer board

Monday, April 01, 2019

Interpreting Verizon's contract buzzwords

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I recently upgraded my phone to a new iPhone 6+. It's great, but that's not the point of this article. In reading through the contract information, both before and after signing, I became aware of the fact that my contract has a lot of buzzwords that are not clearly defined.

In Googling for the definitions, I found that it is very hard to find definitions for most of these. As a service to my readers, here are all the line items from my contract, and the best explanation I've found so far for them. Some come from Verizon or from user-forum discussions I ran across. Some are based on my own intuition and understanding of wireless technology.

Corrections are welcome and will help to make the list more complete. I don't promise that it's all correct, but I hope people with specific knowledge will be able to help me improve it and make it correct.

Updated on June 4, 2015, based on reader comments. Thanks much!

Updated on April 1, 2019, based on the receipt we got when we upgraded one of our phones last July.