Qualcomm LTE Direct Allows Calls Between Devices To Skip The Cell Tower

Here's a cool prospect: Imagine making a call while on-the-go, and rather than have the transmission go through a tower, it instead goes through someone else's phone. This idea isn't new, but Qualcomm has the capability to make it a standard, and with LTE Direct, it hopes to accomplish that.

LTE Direct has the capability to work with phones up to 500 meters away, much further than Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, which in a populated city isn't really a tall order. The ability to place a call without major help from a phone tower is only the beginning of what this technology can do. Beacons could be placed all around the city that would aide in this improved signal, but have the added ability to broadcast messages to those in the area - something with limitless possibilities.

LTE Direct could prove beneficial in places like Qualcomm Stadium

We'd hope that such functionality would require acknowledgement on behalf of the user, and if so, something like that could become actually useful. Envision being downtown, for example, and being beamed all of the deals from restaurants in the area, or a store telling you that it's having a shoe sale. Again, this would be highly annoying if unsolicitated, but could prove extremely useful otherwise.

Qualcomm expects that LTE Direct could make it into shipping phones by the end of 2015, and some companies have already begun developing apps around it - including Yahoo!. Overall, it's a cool tech, and all I hope for is that it doesn't become an absolute nuisance - or another great way for our phones to become compromised by less-than-honest folks.