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Senator Uses FCC Nomination Process To Question National Wireless Network
K7DAN contributes this excerpt from the intersection of politics, regulation, and high technology: "Sen. Charles Grassley is standing by his threat to place a hold on two nominees to the Federal Communications Commission over concerns about a controversial new wireless network the agency has allowed to move forward. The Iowa Republican this week accused the FCC of refusing to comply with his requests for information on its discussions with Virginia company LightSquared regarding its next-generation national wireless network. Some fear the network would hinder the effectiveness of high-precision GPS systems — used by the military, farmers and others. Grassley also raised questions about the involvement of Harbinger, the hedge fund behind the project and founded by Democratic donor Philip Falcone."
This seems like a reasonable inquiry. However, he's a replublican, and this is slashdot, so can someone enlighten me as to why it isn't? :)
Why do I get the feeling that there is some motivation (other than lost farming equipment) behind the resistance to the LightSquared network?
Sounds like commie trickery to me too, senator.
One thing that so many don't realize about the U.S. Congress, and particularly the Senate, is that so much of the bullshit that goes on has nothing to do with their constitutional duties to craft, debate, and revise legislation, but rather to the skirting and enforcing of procedural rules. I'm not talking about overly-civilized stuff like Robert's Rules of Order that keep everyone from shouting at the same time. These are rules that, for instance, allow a single disgruntled Senator to completely uphold the nomination process - such as this case. Sometimes the Senator has demands for such and such information (which may be valid), but usually it is just a veil for quid pro quo. Most egregious of these procedures is the anonymous hold, which allows otherwise qualified candidates to have their nomination in limbo, indefinitely, at the whim of some Senator so craven they won't even dignify their objection in public. The Senate is authorized to advise and consent on executive nominations, not to hide in the corner and pout like children.
... is when the goals of the sponsors coincide.
In this case, LightSquared might be taking bandwidth away from Ad Hoc wireless networks -- of course Grassley is concerned about his military backers and their precession GPS -- likely because Drones given to police stations are going to need to accurately pinpoint hippies in a crowd to drop payloads of Pepper Gas on.
>> Either way; I'd much prefer that a bunch of people started using WiMax and creating a self-organizing Internet of our own. Come on SlashDot - we are just the geeky anarchists to get it done!
>>"ad space available -- low rates!!!"
The issue at hand is that Lightsquared plans to place strong, satellite-based signals very close in frequency to that of the GPS system -- specifically, signals at 1526-1536 MHz (initially; although Lightsquared has rights to 1525-1559 MHz) that will be 60 dB stronger on the Earth's surface than the GPS L1 signals at 1575.42 MHz.
Since GPS signals are so weak (-130 to -150 dBm at the receive antenna terminals), most GPS receivers have minimal RF filtering, to avoid the insertion loss of the filters and thereby optimize GPS receiver sensitivity. Recognizing that GPS receivers do not have sharp selectivity, for decades it has been national policy (as well as good engineering practice) not to place strong signals near the GPS frequencies. This change in policy is the issue at hand.
Technically, the problem with the Lightsquared proposal is, even if the Lightsquared guys put lots of filtering on their transmitter, so that it is spectrally clean and has substantially no energy at the GPS frequency itself, the millions of existing GPS receivers already in the field will be unable to receive the desired L1 signal in the presence of the strong undesired Lightsquared signal, due to their limited filtering and dynamic range -- and, short of replacing every GPS receiver in the country, there's nothing Lightsquared can do about that.
Why Lightsquared thinks this scheme will work, and they won't be vilified in the press once GPS problems crop up, is something for the psychologists and sociologists to ponder.
I don't even understand how it's possible for FCC to allow this network. Using worldwide satellite downlink band for ground comunications is
waste of bandwidth that was preciously selected and kept clean all around the world. All other companies that use it like Inmarsat,
Iridium and many differential GPS service will suddenly be jammed by someone else providing same service... isn't that great for competition?
To stand in the way of job creation thats for sure.
Anything to got the black gut out.
"Drones given to police stations are going to need to accurately pinpoint hippies in a crowd to drop payloads of Pepper Gas on."
Can only make them smell better, and probably sharpen their reasoning skills to boot.
aren't limited to getting you to Grandma's house. Or directing military devices.
Farmers use them to direct their tractors for planting and harvesting. I think an Iowa Senator might have a legitimate interest in something that could affect the farming in his state.
And I use the signals to plot my way around a new golf course.
I figure my family has about $1400 tied up in GPS receiver technology of some sort.
This lack of empathy and the abuse of "non-lethal" force disgusts me.
I hope OWS teargases the superbowl, you uncivil motherfucker.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
If you check the facts, you will find out that the CEO of LightSquared, Sanjiv Ahuja is an islamist and has an axe to grind with the USA.
The GPS constellation is a national asset, a national treasure, and any attack on it is an attack on the sovereign territory of the USA, and it's people.
Sounds like a declaration of war to me.
Living in an area where people die withing a few miles of a road every year the idea that GPS systems might be affected is enough to make me want to know a LOT more before something like this is put out in the field...
The "Power Line Carrier" stuff was only good for wiping all LF, and HF communications for miles... using the power lines as HUGE antennas for those bands...
The FCC has had a poor track record on unintended consequences in naming secondary users, or allowing commercial exploitation of frequencies already assigned to other services.
So, to sum up, a Republican is defending farmers and the military from a bunch of rogue technologists in league with a giant Democratic hedge fund and a job-killing government overregulator?
Either Grassley is pulling a political trick for political reasons, or his opponents are trying to make it seem that he is playing politics. There's just a few too many political hot-buttons in this scenario to be naturally-occurring.
Because it says right in the summary that this could mess with GPS, and Grassley wants to make sure it doesn't because GPS is an important piece of military technology?
Dude you've been drinking the koolaid. Spectrum has buffer zones! LightSquared is even adding its own buffer zone out of their spectrum to be sure there is no cross-talk. If a GPS device has a properly tuned antenna then there is no way there can be cross-talk because of the buffer zone. The ONLY way this spectrum could interfere with GPS is if YOUR GPS device was not built to specs. This is highly unlikely with milspec equipment.
I saw a senator from Georgia on C-Span talking about this and the owner of LightSquared. The CEO from LightSquared gave detailed technical reasons on why his system would not interfere with GPS while all the senator went on and on about "Obama took money from LightSquared!"
I looked up my dear senator (I live in Georgia) and who is HIS biggest campaign contributors? ATT, T-Mobile, Georgia-Carolina Tower and Verision. So he's running his mouth about pay offs when he's been paid to run his mouth.
So Grassley nor Chambliss are concerned about cross-talk of its effect on equipment their only concern is their PAC money. Hell neither have the technical knowledge to even talk with any kind of intelligence about the subject.
Its all about the money!
The current buffer zone that GPS was designed to operate within is the entire band that LightSquared wants to re-purpose for terrestrial transmission.
Milspec equipment does not have to be built into a hand held portable form factor. The only alternative to a larger form factor is either less sensitivity because of filter losses or insufficient preselection because the filter width is too wide to suppress adjacent terrestrial transmitters when it has to be that physically small.
The FCC GPS receiver specification is part 15 and includes "device must accept interference." Devices up until this time were built with the current RF environment in mind which includes adjacent satellite to ground bands and not terrestrial broadcast bands. I suspect building a receiver able to handle what LighSquared is proposing would require moving away from an integrated direct conversion design to one with less integration and several external IF filters and that is going to be significantly larger.
I agree.