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Google Seeks To Plant Antenna Farm In Iowa
1sockchuck writes "Google is seeking permission to place satellite antennas on land near its data center in Council Bluffs, Iowa. The 4.5 meter antennas could be used to receive content feeds from broadcast networks that could be bundled with a high-speed fiber service. The FCC filings were made by Google Fiber, which is currently laying fiber for a high-speed network in Kansas City that will provide Internet connectivity 'at speeds more than 100 times faster than what most Americans have today.'"
"Google is seeking permission to place satellite antennas on land"
Not to be confused with the antennas they plan to put on water, trees and birds.
I could see requiring permission to place transmitters, but why for receivers?
Legal protection from interference. Example:
http://www.comsearch.com/industry_solutions/interference_protection/c-band_es.jsp
Pretty much first come first served.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Well, at least someone from Kansas City was here on slashdot to confirm your rant.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
From a progressive point of view, I think it makes perfect sense. The more access to the "real world" these people have, the harder it will be for the echo chamber to hold them.
How long can they remain "backward" if they are able to see the goings-on of the world around them? The fundamentalist mindset you're complaining about requires an echo chamber. This is why cults always cut themselves off from the outside world. The outside world provides too much evidence that the crap they're being fed by their chosen David Koresh or Jim Jones is just that, crap.
I honestly think that getting high-technology out into the country would be a progressive's wet dream. The rural parts of the country are so staunchly conservative in part because of their isolation. I suppose one could argue the opposite, as well, that people in urban areas are more progressive because they're forced to live in close quarters and thus have no choice but be more tolerant of those different from them, whether in looks, opinions, religion, etc.
When I was in high school, there was a Catholic grade school that fed into our public school. It was funny watching those kids, in just a few months, go fucking crazy with the freedom to act and dress that they never had before. Ditto with the kids coming in to our "city" school from out on the farms.
As a Kansas resident I am offended. Yes, our nut bags are better at catching press than your's but that doesn't make any other places nut bags less crazy.
It would be cool if Google had farms like this all over the world. Then they could stream the content on YouTube. We could watch euro soccer matches for example.
Or unfiltered news from the middle east, etc.
First of all, these are 15 feet across. That's huge. They also generate passive effects. The dish itself is a parabloic (sic) reflector, and for a unit of this size, can have unintended consequences on equipment located nearby. I don't understand quite how it all works, but the FCC requires permits for antennas above a certain db gain, and these would definately (sic) qualify for that.
It's a receive-only dish. Those don't emit RF. As reflectors, dishes have less effect than a flat surface, other than near their focus. (The focus is close to the dish, and that's where the receiving antenna and low-noise amplifier are mounted.)
I don't understand quite how it all works, but the FCC requires permits for antennas above a certain db gain, and these would definately qualify for that.
No, they do not. I've been involved in RF engineering, in some tangential manner or another, for a quarter century and I've never heard of a FCC antenna permit. I have been involved in FAA work for towers, which is regulated and permitted more than licensed and the FAA isn't the FCC anyway. I have thankfully avoided getting involved with the EPA especially WRT wetland management where some antennas are installed, but the EPA is not the FCC. I have been involved in transmitter licensing, admittedly transmitters are attached to antennas and the FCC is all excited about V/M ERP levels and such but they are licensing a complete system of transmitter, grounding system and antenna, not just an antenna. I have been involved in microwave links where below a certain ERP you are unlicensed and to run above a certain ERP you need licensing (another obvious example is FM broadcast radio transmitter, wanna run 1 milliwatt from your ipod to car radio, fine, but you wanna run 100 watts community radio station you need a license), again this is system licensing not antenna licensing. There is a weird corner case in the family radio service FRS where the antenna must be permanently attached to the transmitter and is type accepted as a complete inseparable unit, but its type accepted not licensed. God only knows local building inspectors LOVE to do all kinds of civil engineering and general permitting foolishness to put an antenna on a tower or whatever, but they are not the FCC. Local oscillator leakage makes any non-TRF receiver essentially a very weak transmitter. So if your LO leakage is at -50 dBmW and you attach a 50 dB radio astronomy antenna to it, you MAY be in violation of the FCC unintentional radiator regulations, but thats not a license thats an emission regulation and that is fixed by repairing your equipment up to standard, not getting a license to interfere. You can do anything the FAA, building codes, zoning, and your bank account will allow you to do WRT to ham radio antennas. There might be some really amazingly obscure corner of RF work where an antenna is licensed that I've somehow avoided, but I find it Highly Unlikely. Please let me / us know if you find it.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Are you nuts, in addition to being uninformed? 15 feet across is *not* a large antenna. And this is a receive-only antenna. You are right, you "don't understand quite how it all works."
This is not news. This is Google seeking a zoning variance. The land is probably zoned agricultural. Iowa zoning authorities have been paying attention to all kinds of tower and antenna placements because of the power generating windmills that are going in. I suspect the "permission" they are seeking is a zoning variance that is no more different that me asking to put a second story on my house, which in my neighborhood requires a zoning variance. *yawn*
signifigant enough that the FCC requires public notice.
Dude I'm telling you, they don't. I've worked at least at three places in telecom with big (heck, giant) ugly recieve (and at one place, transmit!) dishes in engineering and there is no such thing as a FCC requirement or license for the installation, ownership, or use of a dish. Current job has a small farm of dishes I'm not directly involved with in C band and Ku band, coincidentally, but I previously worked for a big microwave digital service, etc. 3 t-3 might not sound like much bandwidth, but out in the boonies, thats like one meg per human being so its not so bad... In an area with more cows than people, old fashioned microwave radio is still better than fiber.
This "dish filing" is because C-band is a dual purpose allocation and the FCC will protect a registered primary user... assuming they've actually registered. Best example outside this service I can come up that might help clarify it is the ham radio 70 cm band has the hams as a secondary service and .mil as primary and if .mil registers a radar or whatever the heck they're doing, then within a certain geographic area the hams get the boot and/or have ridiculous low ERP limitations along with a legal obligation as secondary users to not interfere with the primary users. That's not an issue where I live so there are weaksignal and EME guys with stacked long beam yagis and hundreds of watts, but I know there are places along the flyover coasts where the .mil limits hams to something too small to make even a weak little FM repeater. The 5 MHz ham band channelized ops have the same relationship, secondary allocation means you must stay out of the way of the primary users. GOOG is just registering themselves as a primary user, you secondary folks best stay away.
Air to ground satellite is a primary service in that band and some pt-pt is secondary if and only if there exist no registered cband ground receivers that could be interfered with. All this means is they've declared their willingness to exert their rights as a primary user, rather than waiting until a secondary builds out a network and THEN takes the secondary to court (and wins, because they're legally primary). It just saves everyone a lot of lawyer time and trouble.
Would sprint or whoever be allowed to build a c-band ground-ground pt-pt on the frequencies we use at work within a short distance of our dishes? heck no, we're primary users and we're registered so that ain't happening. They could get (in fact, do have) a secondary allocation that wouldn't interfere with our primary allocated work.
If you don't register, then you can fight it out in court later with a secondary, but its really frowned upon.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger