Got a Cell Phone Booster? FCC Says You Have To Turn It Off 245
First time accepted submitter Dngrsone writes "Some two million people have bought cell-phone wireless signal boosters and have been using them to get better communication between their phones and distant cell towers. But now, the FCC says they all have to turn their boosters off and ask permission from their providers, and register their devices with those providers, before they can turn them back on."
Re:Need more info ... (Score:3, Interesting)
This. The cell phone providers are selling devices and subscriptions to fempto-cells and these boosters cut into that market and compete with their services. This isn't about the airwaves.
Completely agree with this... (Score:5, Interesting)
...and I'll give you a perfect example of what they're trying to fight. I work in a stadium, in an area covered by 15-20 different "cell towers" (real towers, DAS, COWs, etc). The TV production crew works in one or more 53' aluminum expando trailers. Depending on how they're grounded, a lot of them make pretty impressive Faraday Cages - meaning cell phone and radio services are terrible inside them. Some of the TV truck engineers have installed active cell repeaters to help combat this, but of course forget if they have them turned on or not.
A TV truck came to town during an NFL game, they happened to be a truck whose engineers I'm close friends with and I happen to be aware that they run a repeater. During the game I hear reports of cell network issues. I'm walking through a service area only to find a guy with a spectrum analyzer waiving a directional antenna around the halls. I ask him what he's doing, and he says that six cell towers have been completely shut down due to some interference and it's making cell phone communication nearly impossible. (There is a baseball park next door. This can easily lead to tragedy when you have 100,000+ cell phones on the same street corner and no way to call out due to interference and capacity bottlenecks.)
I asked the engineer if he knew when the interference started, he said about 8am Saturday. He said it went away for a while, but then started up again at about 6am on game day. This is the exact schedule the TV trucks were powered up. I tell him to hang on, go to the truck engineers, and ask them if their repeater is on. I tell them to pull it, walk back in to the engineer, and ask how the towers are doing. He says everything seems to be fine now, and asks me what the issue was. I tell him it's taken care of, and walk away.
One cell repeater, left on accidentally in a densely populated area, effectively shut down communications at two major sporting events. They seem like a great idea, but they amplify so much noise at such a high power that they blow regular cell users who can't reach the repeater out of the water. I've seen it happen, and I'm glad the FCC is doing something about it.
Re:makes some sense (Score:5, Interesting)
It actually does make sense - the carriers hold the licenses for using the spectrum these boosters are boosting, they paid a lot of money to use those spectrum licenses.
Thus, you must get the permission of the license holder before you can use that portion of the spectrum.
Re:makes some sense (Score:5, Interesting)
The introduction of a repeater into a cell system means that the engineering of the cell boundaries can be affected. Now, for boosters that are used in building that shield the RF, there is little engineering that needs to be done -- you are essentially extending the antenna outside the shield. (And you can get repeater antennas without boosters that do the same job, and I suspect they are *not* covered by this regulation.)
When you have an active repeater, that means the cell signals from the provider can be relayed as well as the signals from your cell phone. With microcell design, this can play hob with the clearances, so that a phone will see two cell site courtesy of your repeater.
I'm not an expert on cell systems, but I remember some of the arguments used to keep people from using cell phones from airplanes.
Re:makes some sense (Score:4, Interesting)
A passive device does not need approval. A dish antennal on the roof with an appropiate feedhorn and feedline down to an in home antenna should not be a problem. Only active transmission equipment needs regulated.
I was in hilly countryside and asked a resident about the blank billboard on a hill nearby. They explained it was a passive cell phone repeater to bounce signal into the homes in the valley between hills. It seems to do the job well.
Re:When government is involved-everything is polit (Score:2, Interesting)
Actually, Libertarians rarely assume anything. Most Libertarians are fans of logic and rationality. Problems such as how to avoid overly congested airwaves could be handled just fine by limited government libertarians for obvious reasons.
Anarcho-libertarians OTOH would simply argue that either the solution is worse than the problem or that the problem will work itself out naturally. There is actually lots of room in the EM spectrum, at least for narrow band. It makes little sense for two competitors to block out each others transmissions when one can merely shift 500 kHz higher or lower. It would really be in everyone's interest to come up with commonly followed standards/guidelines for EM transmissions.
I'm not really up on all the latest pirate radio stations, but I haven't heard of many who fight against other transmissions on the same frequency. If you know that someone is already transmitting on 176.432 Mhz you can just choose 177.389 Mhz or whatever. Also consider how rare pirate radio stations are. It's just not such a huge problem that we need police state enforcement.
I don't think we have to all live as slaves just so our radio and TV stations are nice and clear. If the price of not being a slave is that it makes wireless communication more problematic then so be it. It may very well be true that EM waves are more efficient when allocated by the government, but I would much rather live in a free society with more difficult wireless than live as a slave in one where there is never any interference because causing it is punishable by death (or in our case a slap on the wrist fine only occasionally enforced)
Personally I don't have a major problem with the FCC when they are attempting to sort out wireless standards. That's a useful activity whether or not it is truly necessary. I do have a problem with them however when they engage in censorship. And such censorship is pretty much inevitable once the government is given control of the EM spectrum.