06-09-2021, 09:19 AM
Not likely. This concept is quite old and has been used by "Free", a French ISP that entered the mobile market (and possibly a second ISP). Well before going mobile, their modem/routers (what we call a "box" in French) had a side SSID that was open to all Free customers in the vicinity. You could use that on vacations (or as a backup if you own line was down). Of course you could turn it off in your router but then you lost the possibility to connect to others.
After a few years they entered the mobile market, but since they didn't have many antennas and had to rent the bandwidth from other established networks, they re-used this side channel to connect phones. In dense cities like Paris this worked quite well (but you needed a phone that could support this, which meant mostly an iPhone at the time).
After a few years they entered the mobile market, but since they didn't have many antennas and had to rent the bandwidth from other established networks, they re-used this side channel to connect phones. In dense cities like Paris this worked quite well (but you needed a phone that could support this, which meant mostly an iPhone at the time).