What do you think of GSM/Phone "colo"?

Say you can mail your gsm chip, you take care of data/etc charges.
And one just places your gsm chip into some esp32, and give you the ability to forward/script/record/log sms/calls?
I'm guessing there's people who would pay to have a "phone" in some city in the u.s. or something

I know there's already cheaper software/voip/etc alts but someone might want a real "verizon" chip on a "real antenna" idk

I know i don't have to worry about spam as that's really hard to do with just 1 number, idk, maybe im wrong

Comments

  • Verizon USA never had GSM.
    They used to have CDMA but that's discontinued too.
    Nowadays they have LTE and 5G NSA.
    MODEM costs more than $100.

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  • @yoursunny said: Nowadays they have LTE and 5G NSA.

    MODEM costs more than $100.

    thanks!
    an lte module is 45$ tho

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  • edited June 30

    Probably for SMS-based two factor authentication or anti-botting which isn't compatible with some cheap VoIP providers. So having a $2.50/month phone plan and a real LTE connection somewhere in the USA could be beneficial to someone who doesn't live there. There are dev boards in the $10-$15 range which are probably useful for this purpose, but they would really only work for T-Mobile, because T-Mobile is the only carrier that doesn't whitelist which devices are allowed to connect to their network. AT&T and Verizon limit which devices can connect, and going through that certification process can be very expensive.

    But, the biggest problem is that this is probably against ToS unless you have an IoT or MVNO contract with the base carrier.

  • @rockinmusicgv said: But, the biggest problem is that this is probably against ToS unless you have an IoT or MVNO contract with the base carrier.

    that's what im trying to figure out, idk if having people send in their own chip might circumvent this

    american cellphone ISP's NAT'd ips are sometimes "unbannable" in some web scraping stuff, as banning such ip4 could block a whole state

  • edited June 30

    T-Mobile sells 30GB data only sims for computers and hotspots for $10 a month. No phone # included though. If you are going to do this you need to look at the supported devices for the plan you are getting as T-Mobile would terminate your service if you used the data plan above I mentioned on a regular phone.

  • @GirlButGuyIRL said:
    american cellphone ISP's NAT'd ips are sometimes "unbannable" in some web scraping stuff, as banning such ip4 could block a whole state

    You could still accomplish this using the cheap LTE dev boards found on AliExpress if you're comfortable using their AT codes. Which is good, because once T-Mobile figures out what you're doing you're likely to see IMEI-based device bans.

  • @GirlButGuyIRL said:
    american cellphone ISP's NAT'd ips are sometimes "unbannable" in some web scraping stuff, as banning such ip4 could block a whole state

    So your whole use case is based around evading bans for - at best - dubious behaviour?

    (also, given that people are happy to block whole countries, why do you imagine they won't also block some random US state?)

  • @rockinmusicgv said: You could still accomplish this using the cheap LTE dev boards found on AliExpress if you're comfortable using their AT codes. Which is good, because once T-Mobile figures out what you're doing you're likely to see IMEI-based device bans.

    that's actually what i was referring to

    also i find that hard to be detected

    @ahnlak said: So your whole use case is based around evading bans for - at best - dubious behaviour?

    from my experience scraping, the villain here is the site we scrape

  • @ahnlak said: (also, given that people are happy to block whole countries, why do you imagine they won't also block some random US state?)

    you don't understand americans then, they really are bigoted/arrogant

  • AuroraZeroAuroraZero Moderator

    @GirlButGuyIRL said:

    @ahnlak said: (also, given that people are happy to block whole countries, why do you imagine they won't also block some random US state?)

    you don't understand americans then, they really are bigoted/arrogant

    Anyone with a note of CyberSecurity in mind will block you faster then it takes a cow to piss. Country or person makes no difference. Everyday AI is being utilized to track things like this and they will be onto it in no time. Especially in the U.S. where scanning is frowned upon for various reasons.

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  • @AuroraZero said: Anyone with a note of CyberSecurity in mind will block you faster then it takes a cow to piss. Country or person makes no difference. Everyday AI is being utilized to track things like this and they will be onto it in no time. Especially in the U.S. where scanning is frowned upon for various reasons.

    they are not "blocking me", what are you talking about, I'm telling you some sites will outright not ban select IP4s from cellphone carriers, this isn't speculation, you can look this up, you guys don't even scrape on the same level and are just talking out of your asses

    how am I going to get blocked? HOW, I'm not even doing the scraping, buying the chip, using the resources, reselling a service, none of that

  • AuroraZeroAuroraZero Moderator

    @GirlButGuyIRL said:

    @AuroraZero said: Anyone with a note of CyberSecurity in mind will block you faster then it takes a cow to piss. Country or person makes no difference. Everyday AI is being utilized to track things like this and they will be onto it in no time. Especially in the U.S. where scanning is frowned upon for various reasons.

    they are not "blocking me", what are you talking about, I'm telling you some sites will outright not ban select IP4s from cellphone carriers, this isn't speculation, you can look this up, you guys don't even scrape on the same level and are just talking out of your asses

    how am I going to get blocked? HOW, I'm not even doing the scraping, buying the chip, using the resources, reselling a service, none of that

    Don't pay attention to the crazy Yeti in the corner doing the moonwalk.

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  • Fun concept!

    I was involved in a mobile provider (Limesco) that actively encouraged experimental usage like this. We didn't make it though, it's a though market catering to niche usage.

    In your case you wouldn't be the provider though, only the hoster for the hardware. As far as banning is concerned, T-mobile might get suspicious if hundreds of devices keep connecting to the same few antenna's, but they're all from different customers just hanging around in your house.

    I'd say that as long as your customers don't try to flash the base band processor and keep switching IMEI codes or such, there's little for T-mobile to get suspicious.

  • At least in the US, GSM and 3G are both pretty near dead. It's LTE or 5G now. This "colo" notion sounds close to scamming-as-a-service if you're trying to do it at scale. For a one-off, it's easy enough to scrounge an old phone and plug it in somewhere.

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  • We are moving from SIM to e-SIM, much easier.

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  • @AuroraZero said: faster then it takes a cow to piss

    does this imply cows piss too fast?

    youtube.com/watch?v=k1BneeJTDcU

  • alentoalento Hosting ProviderOGServices Provider

    So the OP @GirlButGuyIRL is talking about SIM card hosting. A thing in the civilized world, but not so in the U.S. I suspect that this is due to regulations or some other American exceptionalism. Too bad, as I needed and searched for exactly the same thing extensively in the past.

    What I did as a solution, was to order a SIM card from a MVNO of T-Mobile's, Ultra Mobile, which unlike most MVNO's allows international roaming. Additionally, they also support wi-fi calling. I now can receive my 2FA SMS codes for banks and other companies which require a US based phone number, while being outside of the country.

    Ultra Mobile, btw, is $3 per month, and SMS reception while roaming is 10 cents per incoming SMS in most countries. Using wi-fi calling, incoming SMS's are free.

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  • havochavoc OGContent Writer

    You'd effectively be competing against the residential proxy market.

    The odds are not in your favour

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