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Comment by DDR0 | Hacker News Reader

This is why we've started integrating SIM chips into TVs. :3

Folks keep saying this, but I can’t find a reference to this actually happening. There is no way that current wireless connectivity can be cost effective to deploy at the scale of consumer televisions.

I think the average number of active cellphones per person and sometimes-used TVs per person are both about 0.8. Where do you live that there are orders of magnitude more TVs than cellphones?

It costs hundreds of thousands of dollars to millions of dollars to certify an LTE/5g device. Not the chipset, but the entire device. Then, the per part cost of adding LTE chipsets that won’t be used on the majority of devices, since they’ll be connected to consumer internet. Finally, there is a fixed service cost that is not trivial per device per month per kb, usually.

Each stage of design cuts into the already razor thin margins. And for what? To get data on a few people that don’t connect their tv to the internet?

integrate an off-the-shelf 2G modem chip that's been certified for decades and cut a deal with a cellular carrier to only charge you per kb instead of per month like vending machine companies do

> This is why we've started integrating SIM chips into TVs.

WiFi chips plus a deal with one of the big ISPs that already uses customer-site equipment to provide their own hotspot network app would be more economical and cover most urban and many suburban areas quite well.

Who is we in this statement?

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