Re:New 5G protocol vulnerabilities allow location tracking
by rocqua on Monday March 29, 2021 @04:51AM
(#26618984)
Paging goes back to the original GSM (so even before 2G). In fact, the technology of paging predates mobile voice. The technology was used in pagers!
It is a staple of any always-available battery powered device.
Unfortunately, although listening for these paging messages requires less power than having a full connection, it's still non-zero.
For really lower-power applications, 5G (and I think some of the later 4G extensions) support Mobile-Initiated Connection Only, which essentially means the device goes into low-power mode but doesn't even listen for paging messages - instead, it wakes up occasionally (maybe even just once a day) and sends and receives messages. The tower knows to not even bother trying to page it.