LightSquared Wants To Share Weather-Balloon Frequencies for LTE 141
IDG News Service reports (as carried by PC World) that LightSquared, having lost some of the spectrum they'd hoped to use for a nationwide LTE network because of worries it would interfere with GPS service, has a new plan: to use some of the spectrum currently reserved by the federal government for uses like weather-balloon communications. From the article: "The new plan would give the carrier 30MHz of frequencies on which to operate the LTE network. That's 10MHz less than it had wanted but still comparable to the amount of spectrum Verizon Wireless and AT&T are using for their LTE systems, which in most areas use just 20MHz. Wireless network speeds are determined partly by how much spectrum the network uses, so LightSquared might be able to deliver a competitive service for its planned coverage area of 260 million U.S. residents."
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Nice choice of spectrum (Score:2, Interesting)
Several reasons it's better.
Firstly, weather balloons are a _LOT_ closer to the transmitter than GPS.
300mW@100km is a much, much stronger signal than 50W at 40000km.
Secondly, there are perhaps a few dozen stations that receive weather balloons, and these can be upgraded for well under a few thousand dollars each.
It's not like GPS, where there are literally millions of receivers that may be affected.