Kindle with 3G was great, free internet globally. Never once showed me an ad, and most Kindles didn't have it.

When that day comes buy a monitor, or hack the firmware.

You can always break off the aerial.

Cell phone connections don't need to use aerials anymore. The antennas in smartphones are often planar arrays or square-ish fractal antennas. From the outside they literally look like little boxes or squares. The casual mechanic might have a hard time distinguishing them from a chip.

> Won’t be long before they have 5G chips in and that isn’t your choice anymore. Kindles have done that since 3G

How do these things work? Do they have a contract with a phone service operator in each country in the world for unlimited data, or what?

The device company usually has a bulk data contract with a large telecom. It isn't unusual for IoT device companies to end up as minor telecom providers themselves, buying bandwidth in bulk and reselling it to consumers.

I don't think you can buy a kindle with a cellphone radio anymore, and the ones that had them cost extra.