Google Seeks To Plant Antenna Farm In Iowa 98
1sockchuck writes "Google is seeking permission to place satellite antennas on land near its data center in Council Bluffs, Iowa. The 4.5 meter antennas could be used to receive content feeds from broadcast networks that could be bundled with a high-speed fiber service. The FCC filings were made by Google Fiber, which is currently laying fiber for a high-speed network in Kansas City that will provide Internet connectivity 'at speeds more than 100 times faster than what most Americans have today.'"
Re:Why would they need permission? (Score:5, Informative)
I could see requiring permission to place transmitters, but why for receivers?
Legal protection from interference. Example:
http://www.comsearch.com/industry_solutions/interference_protection/c-band_es.jsp [comsearch.com]
Pretty much first come first served.
Re:Why would they need permission? (Score:1, Informative)
First of all, these are 15 feet across. That's huge. They also generate passive effects. The dish itself is a parabloic reflector, and for a unit of this size, can have unintended consequences on equipment located nearby. I don't understand quite how it all works, but the FCC requires permits for antennas above a certain db gain, and these would definately qualify for that.
Re:Why would they need permission? (Score:4, Informative)
signifigant enough that the FCC requires public notice.
Dude I'm telling you, they don't. I've worked at least at three places in telecom with big (heck, giant) ugly recieve (and at one place, transmit!) dishes in engineering and there is no such thing as a FCC requirement or license for the installation, ownership, or use of a dish. Current job has a small farm of dishes I'm not directly involved with in C band and Ku band, coincidentally, but I previously worked for a big microwave digital service, etc. 3 t-3 might not sound like much bandwidth, but out in the boonies, thats like one meg per human being so its not so bad... In an area with more cows than people, old fashioned microwave radio is still better than fiber.
This "dish filing" is because C-band is a dual purpose allocation and the FCC will protect a registered primary user... assuming they've actually registered. Best example outside this service I can come up that might help clarify it is the ham radio 70 cm band has the hams as a secondary service and .mil as primary and if .mil registers a radar or whatever the heck they're doing, then within a certain geographic area the hams get the boot and/or have ridiculous low ERP limitations along with a legal obligation as secondary users to not interfere with the primary users. That's not an issue where I live so there are weaksignal and EME guys with stacked long beam yagis and hundreds of watts, but I know there are places along the flyover coasts where the .mil limits hams to something too small to make even a weak little FM repeater. The 5 MHz ham band channelized ops have the same relationship, secondary allocation means you must stay out of the way of the primary users. GOOG is just registering themselves as a primary user, you secondary folks best stay away.
Air to ground satellite is a primary service in that band and some pt-pt is secondary if and only if there exist no registered cband ground receivers that could be interfered with. All this means is they've declared their willingness to exert their rights as a primary user, rather than waiting until a secondary builds out a network and THEN takes the secondary to court (and wins, because they're legally primary). It just saves everyone a lot of lawyer time and trouble.
Would sprint or whoever be allowed to build a c-band ground-ground pt-pt on the frequencies we use at work within a short distance of our dishes? heck no, we're primary users and we're registered so that ain't happening. They could get (in fact, do have) a secondary allocation that wouldn't interfere with our primary allocated work.
If you don't register, then you can fight it out in court later with a secondary, but its really frowned upon.