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."
Some people (Score:5, Insightful)
Just don't know when to fold.
Re:Some people (Score:5, Informative)
The GPS industry didn't screw them over. It was there first, and it is far more important to EVERYBODY than yet another carrier building a network on the cheap.
That being said, if weather baloons is all there is in this proposed frequency range, I say let them have it, as long as they provide unlimited sim cards to weather baloon services and let them swap in cheap cellular radios for what ever they are using now.
Somehow, I suspect they have glossed over what other services might be in those frequency ranges.
Re:Some people (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't view public use of GPS as more important than public broadband.
Your views don't matter.
The country as a whole, actually, the world as a whole, has decided that GPS location is far more important than yet another boradband provider.
The "kit" in the field was there first, and you can't tell every owner of every GPS equipped device in the world that they have to replace their devices just so this bunch of clowns can make money.
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You can tell them to keep their transmissions from bleeding into the spectrum that someone else purchased, and if they have to upgrade their equipment to do that, then tough titties. Just because there was an empty lot next to your house for years doesn't mean you can keep tossing your trash into it when someone else buys the land and wants to build a house there. Hell, you should've been fined and told to stop that years ago instead of being left to muck it up in the first place.
Shows what you know.
GPS receivers do not transmit. Therefore they do not bleed.
Seems you are pretty well behind the knowledge curve on this issue.
The problem was also that these clowns bought spectrum specifically designated for Orbit-to-surface transmissions and then decided they were going to skip the whole satellite thing and use the spectrum from ground towers.
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GPS wasn't bleeding into anything. The issue was that LightSquared got their spectrum on the agreement it wouldn't fuck with GPS. Guess what their use of the spectrum was going to do? Oh, yeah. It was going to fuck with GPS since they were going to transmit at a power level many magnitudes more than GPS effectively drowing it out.
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" It is 100% the fault of shoddy deities with poorly thought out laws of physics"
FTFY
You can't here a whisper from 20 yards away if the guy sitting next to you is screaming down his mobile phone.
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" It is 100% the fault of shoddy deities with poorly thought out laws of physics"
FTFY
You can't here a whisper from 20 yards away if the guy sitting next to you is screaming down his mobile phone.
There there, he has GPS for that.
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News flash: You are not important at all. your views dont matter to anybody. You also know both of those facts, because you dont have the balls to post under your account instead of responding by using the AC setting.
If you had ANY education at all you would understand why the GPS system is a protected service. I suggest learning how to use a computer and then the internet , as well as a tricky technology called a search engine in order to educate yourself on the subject.
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Really? So there are only two states: be silent or tell everything about you.
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Use a nom de plume? That's what sane people who still want some level of privacy do.
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If the nearby frequencies were not 19 orders of magnitude more powerful, this would not be a problem..
Seriously, to make a filter that would work here would render any receiver unusable.. Even Lightsquared cutting off 99.999% of their signal in the GPS ranges meant the GPS receiver would have needed to pull their signal out of another signal that was 13 orders of magnitude more powerful. It would be like trying to pick out a whisper from 40 feet away in a rock concert while standing in front of the speaker
Re:Some people (Score:4, Informative)
Least they are not going down without a fight after the GPS industry screwed them over. They PAID spectrum to start a business on but interference with GPS devices WHICH clearly is the fault of companies that made the GPS devices screwed them bad.
They paid for spectrum that was specified for satellite to ground communication. They obtained a waiver to use that spectrum for ground-ground on the condition that they not interfere with adjacent satellite to ground users. They failed to do that, and so their conditional waiver doesn't hold. They are still free to use the spectrum they bought on the terms under which they bought it, they just don't have any business model there because their entire business model hinged on the gamble that they failed to pull off.
At this point, they seem to have moved to plan B 'Act injured and demand that the feds give them a handout because they deserve to succeed'.
Re:Some people (Score:4, Funny)
That's an outright lie. Your comment is bad and you should feel bad.
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Least they are not going down without a fight after the GPS industry screwed them over. They PAID spectrum to start a business on but interference with GPS devices WHICH clearly is the fault of companies that made the GPS devices screwed them bad.
They knew they would screw with GPS before they started . they are just a bunch on no goods out to cause as much hassle as possible there is plenty of spectrum they just want to use what is already in use they need to go away and fold or start behaving like a company that has sanity at it's core look for vacant spectrum . If they keep this game up they will be railroaded out of existence ..
bye bye trash & Co
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Least they are not going down without a fight after the GPS industry screwed them over. They PAID spectrum to start a business on but interference with GPS devices WHICH clearly is the fault of companies that made the GPS devices screwed them bad.
They PAID for spectrum which was designated to be used for a different purpose, then tried to convince everyone that there was no problem with changing the purpose of that spectrum, even though it caused interference for existing users of neighbouring spectrum.
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Just pay for proper spectrum already! (Score:5, Insightful)
Second verse, same as the first. LightSquared just doesn't want to pay for spectrum. First they tried muscling in on satellite frequencies, claiming to the FCC that they'd primarily be satellite-based while telling everyone else that they'd be terrestrial only. And of course, they got caught because pretty much *any* terrestrial-strength broadcast is going to swamp out any satellite-based stuff on the same frequencies.
So now they're trying it again, trying to squeeze in on some pre-established frequencies. I don't claim to know any technical details of weather-balloon communication, but I do know this: if it *were* possible to safely share those frequencies with LTE-like communications, it would likely have been done already. Given their prior track record, LS is going to have to argue pretty effectively to convince me.
Look, LightSquared. You should've just paid for actual spectrum you could use before. You acted like a cheap bastard and tried to use the wrong parts because it was cheaper, and then you cried when it didn't work.
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Reminds me of those trying to get the DOD, et al to give up their legacy IPv4 space, so they can make money, of course.
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Although I don't have much respect for Lightsquared, they do bring up an interesting issue - making sure that the available radio frequency spectrum is being used for the 'best' purposes. Of course, 'best' as defined by Lightsquared is what makes money for them, but it could be argued that given advancements in radiotechnology and lessening importance of weather balloons, this switch might be advantageous to society at large.
I'd feel better in the FCC agreed and auctioned the spectrum rather that give it t
Re:Just pay for proper spectrum already! (Score:5, Informative)
It'll be a long while before something will "lessen the importance of weather balloons". Unless you can figure out a way to measure air pressure, humidity, temperature, and wind direction from 0-70k ft regularly without launching balloons or dropsondes, they'll be needed. And if you can figure out a way to do it, the folks who fly the Hurricane Hunter aircraft would like a word with you so they can stop flying in and around tropical cyclones.
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A weather balloon is what a drone for this purpose looks like.
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Drones?
You expect a drone to fly through a hurricane? That's not easy even for large multiple-engine jet aircraft with skilled and experienced pilots in the cockpit.
Strat
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What frequency are you going to talk to the drones on?
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LOL, budget owned. A Global Hawk costs $104 million. $104 million * 122 WFOs = $12.6 billion dollars. Somehow I think they'll stick with cheap radiosondes twice a day.
I tak it you don't (Score:2)
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You're assuming that you can even recover them. The balloons launched from NWS offices near the coast end up in the drink 99% of the time. When I was touring their office, one of the meteorologists at NWS Tampa said in his service years, he's heard of 2, maybe 3, of the radiosondes being launched from their office be recovered.
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You seem to have a limited understanding of weather prediction. Given the limitations of our current weather models, it's difficult to generate a forecast for t + 24 hours when you don't receive observational data until t + 168 hours (if ever, as the previous post mentioned).
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Ummm, that's how it works now. Spectrum is never sold, only allocated for a given timeframe while it's "in the public interest".
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
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if the DoD is sitting on a class A and only using a couple of thousand addresses you could redistribute all of their unused ones and not change a single thing about how they work
So, you already know for a fact that they're not using a couple of thousand address spread across their entire /8? What if they're using 7.1.1.1, 7.2.1.1, etc? That would only be 256 addresses, but would be a non-trivial change to their internal routing.
Get over it & deploy IPv6. I'm sick of hearing ANY defense of the idea of re-allocating /8's.
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Done that. I'm on Comcast Business Class for my home. It isn't like this is the cheapest option, but they actually have techs that I can call and SOME of them can help me.
Hell call ANY regional carrier and ask about their IPV6 rollout plans
Comcast, evil though they may be, has one, and I'm on IPv6 now
The industry simply doesn't have enough trained techs with IPV6 knowledge and experience
We agree. This won't change until we see more adoption of it by ISPs. The techs need to start using it at home so they can use it at work.
I could go on, but my main point is that r
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Look, LightSquared. You should've just paid for actual spectrum you could use before. You acted like a cheap bastard and tried to use the wrong parts because it was cheaper, and then you cried when it didn't work.
You don't have to pay for spectrum, just pay for congressmen. It's much cheaper and more effective.
I'll bet that's what LightSquared are doing right now, behind the scenes.
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Look, LightSquared. You should've just paid for actual spectrum you could use before. You acted like a cheap bastard and tried to use the wrong parts because it was cheaper, and then you cried when it didn't work.
You don't have to pay for spectrum, just pay for congressmen. It's much cheaper and more effective.
I'll bet that's what LightSquared are doing right now, behind the scenes.
At&T and Verizon beat you to it. There're isn't much if any spectrum left.
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They thought owning a white house was enough. Too bad for them.
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Eh? They bought spectrum but were not allowed to use it for interference with neighboring spectrum...
http://www.forbes.com/sites/danielfisher/2011/12/21/falcones-lightsquared-faces-enemies-on-all-sides/ [forbes.com]
He thought he’d cleared the last hurdle standing between him and the trade of his life in January 2011, when the FCC granted LightSquared permission to operate a combined cellular/satellite communications network in the so-called L-band, adjacent to the frequencies GPS uses. That theoretically made Falcone’s 56 megahertz of radio spectrum, purchased for about $2 billion in a series of transactions a few years ago....
/em mine
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Ah never mind -- I missed your point, sorry -- you are saying they are playing a two-faced game. They very well may be.
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Second verse, same as the first. LightSquared just doesn't want to pay for spectrum. First they tried muscling in on satellite frequencies, claiming to the FCC that they'd primarily be satellite-based while telling everyone else that they'd be terrestrial only. And of course, they got caught because pretty much *any* terrestrial-strength broadcast is going to swamp out any satellite-based stuff on the same frequencies.
IIRC, LightSquared wanted to use spectrum adjacent to satellite GPS frequencies (e.g. they wanted to use channel 2 and GPS was using channel 3). This should have been fine. But, because most GPS receivers are so cheap/poorly designed/non-conforming they are susceptible to cross-channel interference. It was the GPS manufacturers that messed up. But, because there are already a host of non-conforming GPS units in the field, the FCC, as a practical matter said [in effect], you can't do this because of curr
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We've been over this 100 times every time this comes up.
The spectrum they licensed was intended for satellite use only.
They wanted to use it for terrestrial broadcast.
The neighboring spectrum was also allocated with satellite use in mind.
You aren't allowed to build a factory in a residential area either.
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No, that entire block is allocated to satellite use. GPS uses one of those channels, but all the rest are used (or designated to be used) by satellites. Using any of them at terrestrial power levels would basically cause problems for *any* satellite communications in that range.
The whole "cheap GPS receivers" response is just more LightSquared PR bullshit. It would take an absurdly good design to filter out a signal that is a) only a few MHz away, b) is being pumped out far closer, and c) is being pumped ou
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No, that entire block is allocated to satellite use. GPS uses one of those channels, but all the rest are used (or designated to be used) by satellites. Using any of them at terrestrial power levels would basically cause problems for *any* satellite communications in that range.
The whole "cheap GPS receivers" response is just more LightSquared PR bullshit. It would take an absurdly good design to filter out a signal that is a) only a few MHz away, b) is being pumped out far closer, and c) is being pumped out orders of magnitude higher than any satellite can manage.
Uh, try reading the Forbes article cited by another commenter (I had read it back in the day, and just reread it now, amongst others).
The filter isn't all that difficult, regardless of power level. The GPS receivers are deliberately trying to receive out-of-band spectrum that was not licensed to them to compensate for their cheapness. Even Garmin and Trimble knew there were problems with their equipment and had been cautioning investors about the problem since 2001 (before LightSquared).
Also, the FCC
Re:Just pay for proper spectrum already! (Score:5, Informative)
The filter isn't all that difficult, regardless of power level.
Uh, you do realize that the GPS signal is already below the thermal noise threshold, right? Furthermore, you do realize that, due to pesky physics, any filter reduces the passthrough signal? No doubt you also realize that, due to pesky physics, the billion-times-stronger-signal LS ground stations would have harmonics dissipating energy in the GPS bands?
The filter isn't all that difficult, regardless of power level. The GPS receivers are deliberately trying to receive out-of-band spectrum that was not licensed to them to compensate for their cheapness. Even Garmin and Trimble knew there were problems with their equipment and had been cautioning investors about the problem since 2001 (before LightSquared).
Damn straight. It was a conspiracy to put LS out of business; a conspiracy so vast and intricate that it started a decade before the innocent, virtuous underdog LS demanded the modification of the terms under which they purchased their spectrum license. Besides, everyone knows that you get a better quality of signal if your receiver deliberately receives on other bands. Occam would be proud of your incisive analysis of the situation.
Or, perhaps GPS manufacturers didn't put tighter bandpass filters on their receivers because those filters would further attenuate the GPS signal that is already below the noise floor. Just a thought. Nevermind, the conspiracy makes more sense.
If the FCC had been more awake, it might have stopped this after $50M down the drain instead of $4B. That's what Congress wants to know [and I do, too].
If only a nanny government would have protected them from their stupidity and lack of undergraduate RF communication theory, they would have saved money!
No, this was the correct outcome: the FCC raised an eyebrow when LS claimed they could make this work (I mean, this doesn't require a PhD in RF to understand there's probably no way this would end in success), but allowed LS to try anyway after they insisted they wanted to do so. Predictably, LS failed to achieve the standard.
I suppose you would prefer a government that prevents possible failure by restricting everything to known, proven approaches, but I don't. The freedom to fail is fundamental.
It seems fair to give LightSquared some alternate spectrum that they can use to compensate them for the $2B lost on the spectrum that they already paid for.
No, that would not be fair. LightSquared thought they could pull a fast one on the laws of physics by acquiring spectrum with the deliberate, ulterior intent to repurpose it for terrestrial broadcast. There's a reason they obtained the spectrum so cheaply: it can't be used by billion-times-stronger-than-GPS terrestrial broadcast stations without interfering. Had they chosen more appropriate spectrum then this issue would be moot. None of the major carriers attempted to do what LS did because the major carriers aren't retarded like LS is.
If a house flipper were to buy an already-condemned house for $50 and then the government fails to rescind the condemnation after they haphazardly attempt to shore up the roof with $10 worth of rotten 2x4's, perhaps you believe the poor house flipper has been wronged. Perhaps, in your mind, they should seek redress from the government for not protecting them from my own stupidity and therefore they should be entitled to receive a different, uncondemned house for free from the government.
BTW, LS already laid off their technical staff. At this point it's likely that all they have left are execs and a legal department whose job it is to rent-seek. They are going to be this decade's SCO.
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GPS transmits at modest powers at the source but the signals are extremely weak by the time they reach the earth. GPS signals can't penetrate building materials thicker than a modest window (and even then signal is attenuated significantly) -- LightSquared transmitting at power levels that would have similar signal strength for receivers on the ground would have no functional purpose for terrestrial transmitters.
Also, GPS transmits at extremely low data rates because it is impractical to transmit at high sp
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Lets consider a few facts about RF transmission.
1: achievable data rate is pretty much directly tied to the signal to noise ratio and the ammount of bandwidth you have available. Since there is a limit to how low you can reasonably get the noise to get a higher SNR you either have to increase the effective radiated power of your transmitter or increase the directionality of your receive antenna.
2: RF signal level drops off considerablly with distance. The free space model gives inverse square, the plane ear
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Why can't Lightsquared build towers that operate at power levels comparable to GPS signals?
To answer your question, it's because GPS signals arrive at roughly the intensity of a 40-watt light bulb, observed at the distance between the United States coasts.
GPS receivers demonstrate that it's possible for a handheld device to receive GPS reasonably well, below the noise floor or not (and nearly every smartphone does, already), so why must these hypothetical towers operate at such radically higher power levels
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LightSquared has been advertising some magical RF filter without identifying the price, power required, or form factor. If they have a working model, where is a picture of it? Has anybody independently measured or duplicated its performance?
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Forbes -- there's a an unbiased source for you. Think about it -- a rich, connected guy figures out a scheme to get even richer by polluting a resource used by everyone else (the GPS assigned radio band) -- that's pretty much the business model of all of Forbes's target audience. And as far as LightSquared's $3-4B investment, they could have saved it all by asking some real engineers and physicists if they could pull this off. It's not the FCC's fault if all they listened to was bullshit artists who told
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Forbes -- there's a an unbiased source for you.
The article seems to be well balanced and heaped its share of criticism on LS and Falcone in particular [the SEC investigation].
Think about it -- a rich, connected guy figures out a scheme
The article implies he bought/strong armed his way into society--which hardly makes him connected.
to get even richer by
Considering that LS would have been able to provide data plans that were 8X cheaper than conventional wireless, we would all have gotten richer [by being charged less].
polluting a resource used by everyone else (the GPS assigned radio band)
LS would not have polluted the GPS band itself. It was only because inexpensive GPS manufacturers were relying on rec
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Your ham analogy is apt, yet you completely miss the point.
If you design a receiver using all the information that is known, you can't be faulted for having a 'cheap/poorly designed/non-conforming' device. In the TV/ham case, that would mean that the TV is designed knowing that the amateur bands are there, and the power levels that may be used in those bands. If you don't design your device to reject those frequencies at those power levels, you have made a poor device. In that case, you will indeed be
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Your ham analogy is apt, yet you completely miss the point.
I was a ham at one point ... BTW, I did another reply that has additional info/talking points. It might be worth a look (http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3154397&cid=41519923) because I'll try not to repeat too much of it here, but much of what I say will assume you're familar with it. However, I've dug up some additional detail/info that I'll add here.
If you design a receiver using all the information that is known, you can't be faulted for having a 'cheap/poorly designed/non-conforming' device.
Although many webpages cite just two frequencies (the one of import here is 1575.xxxx Mhz), GPS actually has five different bands L1-L5. The GPS b
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...Look, LightSquared. You should've just paid for actual spectrum you could use before. You acted like a cheap bastard and tried to use the wrong parts because it was cheaper, and then you cried when it didn't work.
Amen to that.
I'll add to that:
Hey, LightSquared... It's a piece-by-piece fail. You should know what works for companies that don't have shit to offer and whose ideas have been blocked from actual implementation.. SUE! :D
Copyrights, trademarks, anything. Try to squeeze whatever you can from other corporations who have used the ideas "[you] came up with in your sleep before they did."
Nice choice of spectrum (Score:5, Insightful)
I suspect the request to "share" frequencies with weather balloon transmitters has less to do with available bandwidth and more to do with a relative lack of industry who will be able to stand up this time to object. Weather balloons typically transmit at less than 300 milliwatts [noaa.gov]. If they couldn't figure out how to keep their land based-transmitters from overpowering 50 watt gps signals, I don't see how high-altitude balloons signals will fare any better.
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It's just a trial balloon.
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I would agree that the Weather Balloon Fraternity is less economically and politically advantaged as the GPS community, but ground based radio balloon stations could be upgraded with better antennas / receivers and it might well be a better fit than trying to upgrade millions on tiny little GPS receivers stuck in everyone and everything.
Again, it would be important not to take Lightsquared's take on this without some due diligence. They haven't shown much of a grasp of radio frequency physics in the past.
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Met Aids Spectrum Issues (Score:2)
The Powerpoint presentation:
Meteorological Aids Spectrum Issues [google.com]
It comes down to this:
Radiosonde transmitters operate in a hostile environment, with strict limits on weight, power and so on.
Most will never be recovered or reused.
Keep it simple.
Keep it affordable.
Re:Nice choice of spectrum (Score:4, Informative)
Still, Lightsquared should be denied - they acquired satellite frequencies cheaply, because of the known limitations. They then wanted to repurpose them for terrestrial use, vastly increasing their value. But, it was proven that couldn't work without interfering with other satellite usage (GPS). The government doesn't owe them anything - they can still use those frequencies for satellites, which is exactly what they paid for. Because they couldn't get much more value than they paid for, they're now asking for a "freebie." They have an exaggerated sense of entitlement. Screw them.
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At this point, it's hard to tell whether Lightsquared had some real optimists on their tech team, or whether they understand the value of correctly formatted political whining.
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At this point, it's hard to tell whether Lightsquared had some real optimists on their tech team, or whether they understand the value of correctly formatted political whining.
Franklins and Clevelands [marshu.com]? :)
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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.
Defining LTE would have been useful (Score:1)
Kinda hope they succeed. (Score:2, Insightful)
Again (Score:4, Insightful)
Here is yet another hair brained scheme to use a public resource on the cheap for private profit. Who needs accurate weather forecasts and severe storm warnings when we could let yet another carrier overcharge us for wireless bandwidth?
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Both have been in use since the 16th century.
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Idiom changes. Get over it.
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And the other would seriously disrupt the thought process if it grew in the wrong direction.
Great (Score:5, Funny)
The Producers (Score:3, Insightful)
> has a new plan: to use some of the spectrum currently reserved by the federal government for uses like weather-balloon communications.
BECAUSE NOBODY EVER USES THOSE FREQUENCIES FOR ANYTHING USEFUL RIGHT GUISE?
The amount of stupid in this company just really makes me wonder if I should just start my own scam and get away with it for years while burning up investor money in impossible persuits designed to fail.
It's like The Producers. Heaven forbid they actually do something useful and have to pay back their investors by building a useful network
--
BMO
This news just in... (Score:2)
2.4GHz (Score:2)
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This doesn't have to be a bad thing (Score:2)
This doesn't have to be an adversarial process or a bad thing.
If I were in charge, I'd tell Lightsquared "sure, no problem... as long as you supply suitable communication equipment and free bandwidth to anyone affected", where suitable is a low-power modem capable of running for X hours on Y mHA of battery power, and operating between V-Z temperature range.
If they want to give NOAA, Universities, and anyone else involved in using weather balloons free low-power LTE modems and some reasonable bandwidth, why
Lightsquare's moral obligation (Score:1)
If this is a go, Lightsquared is morally obligated to allow the license it bought previously to be combined with this new spectrum and "re-auctioned," contingent that it get a full refund with interest and some reasonable costs it has already incurred if it loses the new auction.
Why?
Because other bidders placed their bids based on the usefulness of that spectrum at the time, knowing that GPS was already in use and that other slices, including the weather-balloon slice(s), were already allocated.
If Lightsqua
MORONS (Score:2, Insightful)
DO these guys actually have any RF engineers on Staff or Just Fucking Lawyers !?
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Fired all their techs. All that's left is suits and lawyers.
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Fired all their techs. All that's left is suits and lawyers.
"Suits and lawyers."
I love the ring of that.
This is just a symptom of the Steve Jobs disease.. (Score:2, Informative)
Unfortunately, most average citizens have no understanding of wireless technology, so when a guy like Steve Jobs came along and offered them a consumer gadget that requires loads of bandwidth they buy it by the millions. Now they, and the politicians they elect, and vendors who seek some of their money are locked in a battle for unlimited quantities of something that is limited... bandwidth within the RF spectrum.
The hard truth is that there is a limit to the available spectrum, and that limited resource sh
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Luckily we have many systems in place for managing scarce resources. In fact, almost any resource you deal with throughout life is scarce. I'm not saying we manage wireless frequencies efficiently, but I'm quit sure that "navigation, public safety, national security, etc" have been improved by smartphones rather than suffering due to smartphones taking their bandwidth.
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... individuals filling their vacant cranial cavities with individual streams of Youtube cat videos, Justin Bieber vomiting, and other individualized streams of pablum should not be competing for use of the nation's RF spectrum...
I did a quick correct on that line for ya.
I think LS is underestimating weather balloons (Score:2)
Maybe they should look into the swamp gas spectrum.
Funny... (Score:2)
Wouldn't it be hilarious if they gave those who lease the spectrum to them free service, with which usage will ultimately use a large chunk of the available bandwidth (active data use), which will let the end amount of bandwidth be somewhat similar to that of the large service providers today?
"New, fast, 20mbps data* available.
* Mileage may vary. Real-time bandwidth tests show end speed at roughly 1-2mbps."
Just food for thought :)
Re:Range of that Weather-Balloon's WiFi (Score:5, Informative)
And also, Why would Weather-Balloons need that much frequency juice in the first place ?
Its older, cheaper, disposable tech. Might only be 400 baud downlink but usually a pretty wide signal. Simple FM/FSK modulation maybe. The problem is you launch 10 to different altitudes, due to frequency drift from being cold (cheap, remember?) you might find that a struggle to make them all fit without interfering with each other. On a boring fall day you don't launch 10 at a time, but for all I know in a hurricane (literally) you might drop 10 at a time.
Congress already told NOAA to stop using the bottom half or so of the band. The problem is radio allocations are done by the ITU... This is the usual american arrogance problem where it turns out the FCC only regulates inside the US. If someone in Canada wants to launch at 1770 MHz, which is well within ITU regulations, short of bombing the Canadian weather station I'm not sure what they intend to do about it. Just accept the interference I guess.
Also the 1700 MHz band has coprimary with radiosondes and met satellites. The weather satellite people are going to be pissed if their frequencies are reallocated only over the USA.
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Meh, give NOAA sim cards and get off those old hand built single purpose radios and let then use cheap cell radio chips.
If this tech is cheap enough for every speed camera in the country its cheap enough for a throw away baloon radio.
Re:Range of that Weather-Balloon's WiFi (Score:5, Informative)
You don't realise how cheap the sondes are. There are hundreds launched every day, and they don't get them back. They have to be incredibly cheap and there are no GSM technologies cheaper than a simple FM radio.
There are technical limitations too - GSM only works up to about 5km, above that they will likely fail. Sondes usually fly to about 30km.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_phones_on_aircraft#Cell_tower_channel_re-use
The technology may be cheap enough to use in a speed camera, but then again a speed camera is not hovering a thousand feet or more off the surface of the planet. There are other issues at play here, the cellular networks unsuitability for use at high altitudes is one of them. I've worked with weather tech up north (in Canada) before and all their equipment was through-hole with lead based solder specifically for in-field repaira
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Meh, force AT&T and Verizon to make Cellphone towers to beam the signal UP instead of down to the ground to satisfy a bunch of whily rich guys that dont know anything about technology. I'm sure they will do it for free and not pass the new fees along to the consumer.
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I'm not going defend LS (they're just whining because they're not getting their way), but if they're willing to pay for changing the weather balloons to another (lower) frequency, this might be viable. The weather sondes could still be made cheaply if they were moved to something like the old TV frequencies, possibly even a whitespace frequency. The lower frequency would propagate better, and possibly require less power. The bandwidth, data rate, and power levels shouldn't be a problem. The ground stations
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Was the "arrogant American" comment really required to make your point?
Yes. All we need is federal approval from the FCC because we're the worlds empire, stated by someone who doesn't know anything about the frequency allocation process..
The reality is the ITU and its friends regulate international allocations in 3 regions for the world, and then individual countries allocate within the regional international allocations. Its run mostly by techs, and has worked remarkably well.
I guess a close internet analogy would be some .com demanding ARIN take ip addresses from, say, Afr
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Actually the FCC told them they can use their own spectrum, if they comply with the conditions they agreed to when they bought it. LS's problem is that they don't want to comply with those conditions. It looks to me like they knew they couldn't make their network fly with the original conditions in place, but they went ahead and bought the spectrum anyway betting that once they had it they could weasel out of complying with the conditions by boo-hooing about consumers. The FCC didn't buy it. I've little sym
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Seriously, why the fuck does all of their plans involve using SOMEONE ELSES BANDWIDTH?
Because the FCC told them they can't use their own. If you're going to deny them the use of the spectrum they own and paid a couple billion for, I would think it would be reasonable to help them with obtaining an alternative.
They bought satellite to ground spectrum. They can do all the satellite-to-ground their little hearts desire. They just can't set up a bunch of vastly more powerful ground stations and transmit from those.
In other news, my '120db death metal at 3am' plan does not seem to enjoy robust 1st amendment protections...
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The FCC told them they could use it if it did not interfere. Everyone who understood radio knew it was going to interfere, but LS insisted on going ahead. Don't blame the FCC or GPS for LS's arrogance and stupidity.
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It's the "I'm not dead yet" guy. They haven't yet threatened to bite off any legs. And the FCC already said "You're not fooling anyone."