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Air Force Jams Garage Doors
SonicSpike points us to a Chicago Tribune article reporting that in Colorado the Air Force is jamming garage doors. In a joint U.S.-Canadian operation, they were testing communications on a frequency that would be used by first responders in the event of a threat to homeland security. From the article: "But the frequency also controls an estimated 50 million garage door openers, and hundreds of residents in the area found that theirs had suddenly stopped working... Technically, the Air Force has the right to the frequency, which it began using nearly three years ago at some bases. Signals have previously interfered with garage doors near bases in Florida, Maryland, and Pennsylvania."
the problem here is that those garage doors openers are unlicensed transmitters using a band they wouldn't be allowed to use if it wasn't for the "low power" exceptions. if they'd put their transmitters on a public band or gotten a license, they wouldn't have this problem
Its not that at all. When they purchased those devices, they were licences under Part 15. Which states, A. the device must accept harmfull interferance B. the device cannot emmit any harmfull interference. They are a secondary user of those frequencies, and funciton is not garanteed on those frequencies for those devices by the FCC. Its like when my ham radio equipment interfears with the naibors baby monitor. The first problem is i'm not even using the frequency it uses, just one close to it, and the poor design and construction of the device comes into play. Second of all, I fall under part 97 rules, which allows me to generate some levels of interference, so long as it is 120db down from my primart transmitting frequency, i'm legal.
This has nothing to do with rights, there never were any rights to those frequencies for the public, they were never anything more than a secondary user.