alt Hacker NewsI'm surprised the major cell providers are cool with letting randos operate cell towers that back into an unknown untrusted ISP and their customers will automatically switch to when in range. It's unbelievably chill for companies that are usually so concerned about their image and controlling the whole experience end to end.
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Femtocells are remotely controlled by the carrier, they require GPS location (and maybe spectrum sensing), and I assume the backhaul is over VPN. Obviously they can't guarantee any QoS but it's better than having no signal.
(Fun trivia: Our office paid $XX,000 for AT&T MicroCells which wouldn't activate because they couldn't get GPS signal.)
Eh, assuming it's 4G LTE (or above), it's literally the same thing as Wi-Fi calling. This is technically called IMS (IP Multimedia Subsystem, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IP_Multimedia_Subsystem), and is powered by "magic" DNS (no kidding, everything points to 3gppnetwork.org) and literal IP + IPSEC. Even when your phone is connected to Wi-Fi, it enters a special mode called IWLAN which powers your Wi-Fi calling, SMS, and RCS. The only actual factor here is if the ISP that you have versus your mobile network has a good peering.
If the device is remotely managed and all IPSEC back to the carrier, who cares what network it's on? At worst you'd just get poor connectivity, I don't think there's any additional exposure here.
>I'm surprised the major cell providers are cool with letting randos operate cell towers that back into an unknown untrusted ISP and their customers will automatically switch to when in range.
A lot of office buildings have these in them. I think the personal ones are how they get around some of the issues with government requiring them to build networks to certain coverage. They just don't build it out and when someone complains they offer them one of these.