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LightSquared Files For Bankruptcy
fallen1 writes "Wireless broadband company LightSquared has filed for bankruptcy. In filings with U.S. Bankruptcy court, it was revealed that LightSquared had assets and debts of over $1 billion each. The decision followed a year-long fight between LightSqaured and GPS users — including some heavyweights like FedEx and UPS. Apparently Boeing and Alcatel-Lucent are heavily invested, but it would be interesting to see what the old Bell Labs could do with the technology."
This was decided way back at the final interference testing. This is merely formalizing the failure of the business.
1) Come up with profitable idea that violates the laws of physics
... well maybe not.
2) Use political influence to get around the laws of physics
3) PROFIT!
Most people just see the GPS side of this fight, afraid of losing GPS in the continental U.S. In reality it would have mostly affected those who needed extreme precision, not the average users. That's not to say that losing the precision is good, no it's clearly bad for everyone. However, lightsquared wanted to give wireless internet to everyone in the continental U.S. It's just a shame there wasn't some technical way to resolve the issue before lawyers got involved.
I swear they give me mod points to shut me up.
Did these guys have any significant technology? (Just askin, I really don't know. Even the Lightsquared Faq is fairly useless at explaining what they have that hasn't been done before)
And if they did, why not move it somewhere else to some radio spectrum where it will not interfere, such as, but not limited to some of the bandwidth Verizon is finding un-useful in the 700mhz band that they can't pawn off on anybody.
It seems to me that the only problem they had was a dependence on the wrong block of spectrum. On the other hand, any company that wants to push ahead with a spectrum usage with total disregard for existing spectrum use and the safety concerns of the entire GPS community probably isn't a company you want setting up this type of service in the first place.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
...on all those bribes, er, "campaign contributions".
I knew that was inevitable back in December. As soon as they announced the interference test results. Even if it doesn't ultimately do them in (which, being a Chapter 11, it might not), it does provide the ability to start to get ahead of their debt and protect themselves from a large judgment in the court cases.
I've read various articles over the last year that the current administration wanted LightSquared to fail, in order to eliminate competition for a preferred provider (the company that gave campaign donations).
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
Just buy different spectrum.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Yeah but that spectrum that wasn't useful for high power terrestrial transmissions was so much cheaper!
Lightsquared wanted to provide wireless internet at a price (not give). They also wanted to do it on the cheap so they could make money hand over fist. They failed.
Had they wanted to offer wireless at a fair price for a reasonable profit, they would have licensed spectrum appropriate for that application.
What?
They purchased air to ground spectrum and tried to re-purpose it as ground to ground spectrum. They sued when the FCC told them to go take a running jump.
Then tried to claim that GPS vendors were at fault for not having perfect notch filters in their equipment (hint such a thing is not physically possible)
It seemed obvious to me that this wasn't going to work out for them. I suppose this is an example of confirmation bias on my part as I'm sure I wouldn't be posting this if it had gone the other way, but seriously I gave this a 0% chance of success in my minds eye. One wonders why the investors thought that GPS users, the military among them, would roll over and have their devices cease functioning or even risk the interference...
Lightsquared anted to "SELL" internet to everyone, they certainly didn't want to give anything away.
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
Extreme precision is the key to automated driving vehicles, so without that you can forget letting the car drive itself.
And probably the best use of a self-driving vehicle is in the middle of nowhere on a limited-access freeway (i.e., an Interstate highway). If you limit the precision of GPS then forget about letting the car drive through Nebraska.
The spectrum they bought was probably dirt cheap. No way to make a profit with spectrum that is more in demand.
Dirt cheap because nobody else would touch it (for good reason).
If GPS is the key to driverless cars, then I can just imagine how much fun the future prankster can have by setting an appropriately-tuned radio transmitter next to the side of the road.
Let's hope there's more to driverless cars than that.
If I can spot a major typo in the summary 2 seconds after seeing it for the first time ("Litesqaured" in this case) the you are not doing your fucking job.
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
The spectrum they bought was probably dirt cheap. No way to make a profit with spectrum that is more in demand.
Dirt cheap because nobody else would touch it (for good reason).
Did you miss the part in TFA where it explained that "LightSquared invested $4 billion in airwaves"? 4 Billion is still a lot of money, at least where I come from. I suppose for a nationwide network it probably pales in comparison to what AT&T or Verizon hold, but it is still a substantial investment. I wonder if the FCC will give them a refund on all those unused EM rays?
Most people just see the GPS side of this fight, afraid of losing GPS in the continental U.S. In rreality it would have mostly affected those who needed extreme precision,
You mean like land surveyors and engineers. Yeah, people whose livelihoods depend on accurate GPS, because they build useless things like highways, bridges, airports, power plants, and other useless shit like that.
Get the fuck off of Slashdot.
--
BMO
I'm sure the google car system uses everything that your average android device can use to determine it's location.
Don't know something? Look it up. Still don't know? Then ask.
Extreme precision is the key to automated driving vehicles, so without that you can forget letting the car drive itself.
And probably the best use of a self-driving vehicle is in the middle of nowhere on a limited-access freeway (i.e., an Interstate highway). If you limit the precision of GPS then forget about letting the car drive through Nebraska.
Of course that is the best use, why if you were to fall asleep and have your car crash itself, it would surely be best that you do it in a location so remote that your body wouldn't be found for hours or days.
"However, lightsquared wanted to give wireless internet to everyone in the continental U.S."
Stop it. They wanted to sell wireless Internet access to everyone in the US. Internet access based on spectrum which they paid satellite rates for, but wanted to use terrestrially.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Don't buy cheap satellite spectrum to re-purpose for terrestrial use unless you've really thought it out.
None of this would have happened if he had bought more expensive but less problematic terrestrial spectrum or bought a patch of spectrum farther away from the GPS band.
His idea doubtless seemed clever at the time. And it was... if he didn't interfere with GPS. He did though even if it was all the fault of the GPS devices.
Food for thought.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Four billion seems like a lot, but I really have no concept of how much it is unless its put into perspective. I did a quick search and didn't find much so I'll just pull numbers out of the air...if a spectrum normally costs, say $40 billion, and they got it for $4 billion, its still a lot of money to the average person, but dirt cheap for the company.
"(hint such a thing is not physically possible)" thinking outside the box!!?
Last I looked, (a week ago, but hey, maybe it's changed in the last 7 days) surveyors used transits and lasers, not GPS. Even a surveyor's transit is more accurate than GPS. Being accurate to within a few feet (or even a couple of inches, 9 times out of 10, with enhanced units) is not good enough in an urban setting.
Let's call it what it is, Anti-Social Media.
Did you miss the part in TFA where it explained that "LightSquared invested $4 billion in airwaves"? 4 Billion is still a lot of money, at least where I come from. I suppose for a nationwide network it probably pales in comparison to what AT&T or Verizon hold, but it is still a substantial investment. I wonder if the FCC will give them a refund on all those unused EM rays?
Oh sure, 4$ billion is a lot of money. Problem here is Verizon, AT&T, Sprint etc spent even more for spectrum space allotted for high power use and Light Squared was trying to buy cheap spectrum and then get the rules changed. There was no way they could afford spectrum allotted for this kind of use and make their business model work. The licenses they have purchased can be sold to pay their creditors, but I don't think the FCC is going to give them a refund.
Bye Bye Light Squared...
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
If there's one thing I've learned from management seminars, it's that "thinking outside the box" is a very powerful tool.
In fact, since I've started applying this principle in my daily life I have been able to do all sorts of things that the average guy wouldn't think are possible, such as levitate, wall through walls, bend spoons with the force of my will, and build perfect notch filters.
Have a look at (a href="http://trl.trimble.com/docushare/dsweb/Get/Document-140079/022543-079K_TrimbleR8GNSS_DS_0412_LR_sec.pdf"> this. Positioning to 3mm. These are not hand-held consumer units.
Grr. Corrected link
Look harder next time.
"(hint such a thing is not physically possible)" thinking outside the box!!?
My employer tells me to think outside the box but then sticks me in a cube...
Any insufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology.
>Last I looked, (a week ago, but hey, maybe it's changed in the last 7 days) surveyors used transits and lasers, not GPS
You would be wrong.
Surveyors were using GPS before the "fuzzing" and after the fuzzing, surveyors were using Differential GPS (google this). Because the fuzzing was in one magnitude and direction it was trivial to correct for. Set up on a known point, correct for it, bam, your GPS now works like it did before the fuzzing.
Now that the charade of fuzzing is over, everybody uses GPS. Everyone. Especially now.
What you are also ignoring is the fact that the longer an antenna is left in one position and more satellites fly over, you get better and better resolution. Swinging a machete and cutting line takes time and costs money. If you can get a location by setting up on a point and gathering data for half a day instead of cutting line and running a traverse to get to it for two days, then you've come out way ahead.
The ultimate goal of land surveying is to be able to reconstruct a piece of land and who owns it even if it is vaporized by a nuclear explosion. GPS gives you this cheaply.
--
BMO
"(hint such a thing is not physically possible)" thinking outside the box!!?
My employer tells me to think outside the box but then sticks me in a cube...
He was referring to a 2d box. He put you in a 3d box, which by definition is indeed outside the scope of just a 2d box. Just think outside the box and you would see this!
ummm.... why? Current driveless car technology may use GPS for some data, but it's hardly necessary.
Google's driveless car can keep track of the road and oncoming obstacles just through a laser system within a tens-of-meters range which gathers data on close objects and then uses that data to extrapolate the position of further objects from a video feed.
I see no reason why a driveless car would ever really NEED GPS. The computer is perfectly capable of keeping track of the available turns which it has taken/passed up, which should be enough to determine its position (assuming you knew where the car started from).
In fact, cheap, ubiquitous, and wireless internet is far more useful for automated driving vehicles, as you would need a lot of bandwidth for cars to effectively keep track of each other.
If I'm navigating through Nebraska, all I really need to know to get a good-enough position is what freeway I entered on and how many exits I've passed. A video-feed could provide this information. Or even easier, a small signal emitter at each freeway exit could allow the car to record this info.
In order to reply to myself as a follow up
Land surveyors are involved in land disputes and building. All the way from your 100x100 lot to nuclear reactors, bridges and roads, etc.
There are tools in the toolbox spanning from clapping your hands at 90 degrees, wooden beenies and stakes, handheld levels and stadia rods, to steel tape, to total stations to GPS. Just like a programmer has more than one language under his belt, the toolbox of a land surveyor has more stuff in it than most people think, especially undergrad engineering students.
--
BMO
Stupid land surveyor and orienteering trick. Take your watch: Aim the hour hand at the Sun. Halfway between that and 12 is South. Voila, instant crude compass. Obviously in the Southern Hemisphere, directions are switched around slightly.
There are no "sides of the fight". Who the fuck are you to decide that YOUR need for wireless internet is is worth more than "those who needed extreme precision"?! GPS works fine, and they where disrupting it, they KNEW what they where getting into, and got slapped for trying to use spectrum in a way they wheren't allowed to.
Thank you.
>3mm
About the width of a tack.
--
BMO
There's the problem. Instead of insuring the bribes, PayPal kept them and froze LightSquared's account. Result: debt!
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
A modulation technique that didn't crater GPS would have been a start. If you look at the filing, their CFO still believes that they can get a deal with the FCC. So it proves the Insanity Law, 2x. Entrepreneurs will try to defy physics, then do it again. Good luck with that.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
I'm sure the media outlets will do their due diligence and explain that you can't alter the Laws of Physics just to make a profit. Also betting the FCC will take a massively undeserved beating on this.
I'd like to know what happens to the spectrum now. Up for auction to the highest bidder, or will the 'asset' game come in and backroom deals insure this goes to someone who is least likely to do anything useful with it for the commercial sector.
Ask someone who has even a 100 level class in RF design under their belt.
What part of that is congruent with my "is not good enough in an urban setting"?
A transit is quick to set up and get working within a minute or so, doesn't "get more accurate as you wait for more satellites to pass overhead", etc. Also, a transit will work fine in a warehouse or other strutural building where the steel walls and shielding would cause problems with GPS, as well as underground, where GPS absolutely cannot work. Or do you have a neutrino-powered GPS?
Let's call it what it is, Anti-Social Media.
It's not about modulation, it's about power levels required to make their receivers work at usable data speeds totally swamping the front ends of the adjacent GPS receivers.
They could lower power levels, but you have to obey Physics by giving up your data rate and wiz bang modulation techniques are not going to fix the problem for you. I suppose one could get a some pretty low data rate stuff (like under 300 baud) to work at some really low powers. But it's going to be very expensive for the data rate you can expect and you are still going to be causing GPS issues. But for only low data rates, there are other spectrum spaces that would be cheaper and easier that are not near GPS or anything else that would be an issue.
The problem here is that they simply could not hope to transmit at high enough data rates without jamming GPS in the process on the spectrum they purchased on the cheap.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Read the footnotes - nobody is going to use that for a quick survey to lay out the foundations for a building. For example, mode 1 - +/- HALF A METER (not 3mm)
Contrast that to a couple of minutes to set up and level a tripod, and take a fix on a couple of known markers - works w/o an open sky, works with trees overhead, works without concerns for multi-path interference from other buildings, works w/o needing multiple satellites being overhead, etc.
The same considerations apply to the other modes as well, including the "3mm" (which is not going to happen in real life - by the time you've got your 3mm reading, I'm already packed up and gone, and I haven't used a transit in about 15 years).
Let's call it what it is, Anti-Social Media.
What part of that is congruent with my "is not good enough in an urban setting"?
Since when is land surveying restricted to urban settings?
A transit is quick to set up and get working within a minute or so, doesn't "get more accurate as you wait for more satellites to pass overhead", etc. Also, a transit will work fine in a warehouse or other strutural building where the steel walls and shielding would cause problems with GPS, as well as underground, where GPS absolutely cannot work. Or do you have a neutrino-powered GPS?
You're talking to someone who used to get paid to do this shit.
You are talking out of your ass.
--
BMO
I didn't read TFA.
Perhaps I stand corrected about the band being unwanted at the time of purchase. I elaborate a bit below.
+1 about the FCC giving them a licensing refund but that's wishful thinking.
Licenses don't stipulate an obligation to utilize the wavelengths. In fact when LightSquared picked up this portion of the spectrum (near the GPS spectrum) GPS wasn't such a dominant technology and during the time of the rise of GPS they sat on it. I can provide a link to an article where that was mentioned if anyone cares to read it.
A LightSquared supporter claims GPS technology was "sloppy" and some implementation circuits where left vulnerable to high energy in this neighboring spectrum exactly because LightSquared did nothing with that spectrum for such a long time. They even tried to claim that tests where performed using some of that out of date and/or vulnerable circuits exactly so that they would fail. That was before their bankruptcy of course.
boeing and alcatel are not "invested". lightsquared owes them money. there's a big difference between being an investor and being a creditor.
as creditors, it's impossible to know whether boeing or alcatel even really cares if lightsquared goes under. if lightsquared owes them $8 million each, it is possible that each of them has already been paid twice or 3x or 10x that previously.
"Have you ever used a transit or other surveying tool? I doubt it."
The fact that you keep on harping on "transit" as in "transit and tape" means you, yourself, have not touched a piece of surveying equipment in 25 years if ever, since the electronics revolution that cut surveying crews from 5 members to 3 max and usually two. And yes, I do mean the middle of the fucking 80s when Total Stations like Topcon, Wild, and Zeiss fucking changed everything.
Goddamn.
You are a nutcase. Say hello to your new status, asshole.
Yes, I'm mad. Fuck you.
--
BMO
".... but it would be interesting to see what the old Bell Labs could do with the technology."
This is a strange question. What 'technology' did LightSquared invent? Bell Labs came up with many of the fundamental ideas that are still used in wireless communications today, so it's difficult to see what they could learn from LightSquared.
Hence. the. incorrect. modulation. technique.
I disagree that other schemes used at the frequencies they won, would crater gps. It's not amplitude, it's amplitude + modulation scheme.
But the answer is still the same: the spectra is largely unusable for the scheme they desired.
They're filing chapter 11 bankruptcy, not chapter 7.
Not promising regardless, but they're apparently not giving up yet.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
In sum, they thought they were very smart. So much for that.
In the end, the people who got screwed are the investors who followed them blindly, or knowingly. Those were guilty of stupidity or greed, respectively. Either way they have what they deserve.
The idiots who were running the show already got paid. They will now go on to their next venture, using this *success* as a reference.
The band Lightspeed bought is low-power ground/space. Lightspeed is free to use it for low-power ground/space communications all they want, in accordance with its current usage rules.
Lightspeed gambled they could con the FCC into allowing conversion to a different use, and to hell with the harm to anyone else. The FCC never promised that they would do so, allowed experiments to see if it could be made to work, and the experiments failed. Well, Las Vegas doesn't give refunds to gamblers either.
Everybody gets what the majority deserves.
"(hint such a thing is not physically possible)" thinking outside the box!!?
We eagerly await your perfect notch filter. You're gonna be richer than Zuckerberg!
Everybody gets what the majority deserves.
My post referenced urban settings, for which GPS is not the quick+best solution, compared to a simple transit+laser (which also works great using a laser-controlled blade on a bulldozer, if you've ever seen a Cat D9 doing finish grading inside a large metal-clad building, which your GPS solution wouldn't work in). You then post something totally off (machetes in a jungle) and when I point it out, you again go "since when is land surveying restricted to uban settings?"
To turn it around, since when is surveying restricted to locations that don't have tall buildings with multi-path interference of radio signals, or exclusively outdoors and above ground?
And no, based on your intentional attempts-at-derailing-the-issue posts, I don't believe you ever "got paid to do this sh*t", not if you think that GPS is the only, or even best, solution in the majority of cases. Just like your childish foe-ing (oh, look, I hurt the poor widdle boy's feelings ...).
Let's call it what it is, Anti-Social Media.
And you're showing your ignorance - never needed more than myself and one other person, and whatever equipment happened to be available. If that turned out to be a transit that I had to take apart, grind down and relap the base (because someone mishandled it), then re-assemble and recalibrate in an afternoon because over the long term, it's better than going out and renting a new unit, so be it.
So tell us again how well your gps system works in the real world, like when you're in a large unfinished metal warehouse or hockey arena? Oh, it doesn't ... right.
Let's call it what it is, Anti-Social Media.
For what reason would they possibly be given a refund? LightSquared bought the spectrum and then decided not to use it. How is that possibly the FCC's problem? LightSquared knew up front the spectrum was extremely unlikely to work as they desired and bought it anyways. After purchase they pressured the FCC to allow experimental use of the spectrem to see if they could use it as they desired in spite of the fact use was contrary to their licensing terms. Their tests failed. Again, how is that possibly the FCC's fault?
No-one on this thread made any absolute but factually incorrect statement except you. YOU are the one who flatly said 'surveyors don't use GPS'. That is a false statement. Some surveyors DO in fact use GPS. A simple Google search shows many examples. Since that time you have been trying to weasel out of your statement by making it sound as if 'urban settings' or 'doing a quick survey to lay out the foundations of a building' or 'working in a large unfinished metal warehouse' are the ONLY types of surveying done.
That is not "factually incorrect" in any shape matter or form. That *some* surveyors use GPS in *some* situations doesn't make anything I stated incorrect - especially since even you'll have to admit that most surveying is verification of existing structures and positions, not laying out anything new.
Every building that's laid out once initially will be re-surveyed multiple times, w/o the need of a gps unit, for things like certificates of localization, for laying in new utilities or confirming the location of existing ones, etc - a far cry from the "hacking with a machete for two days" that the poster who tried to make the case for the ubiquity of GPS surveying laid out, which even you'll admit is not the usual scenario.
Last weeks work on my street is a case in point - confirming the city plan for several blocks. It was a quicky street-by-street job, with just 2 workers, a laser transit and a reflector. Nobody's going to waste time waiting for gps to verify anything when they already have the master geodesic point from which to measure off of permanently fixed right there in the ground. They just take a couple of angles to confirm its location against the corner of two buildings, then off to the next street.
Now, since these readings HAVE to be confirmed as per the original cadastral plans (in other words, the marker and two permanent structures) a GPS unit is *absolutely* useless. Sure, it will give you an absolute reading, but that doesn't confirm the existing relationship between the geodesic point and the two structures, as per the plans - and it's the plans that count. If and when the city cadastral plans switch entirely to GPS, then they'll be able to use a GPS - until then, forget it.
So the only weaseling out here are the self-appointed "guardians of teh new tek" who don't realize that it's not always going to interface with (or have any legal relevance wrt) several hundred years of land surveys. The plots don't care about GPS coordinates - they care about locations viz. permanent structures only.
Let's call it what it is, Anti-Social Media.
hey are not moderators, they are not editors, all they do is choose which stories to post, do not expect anything beyond that from them.
Yes, they are listed as Editors, but I think that is just that there isn't really a good word for what little they do.
In fact, cheap, ubiquitous, and wireless internet is far more useful for automated driving vehicles, as you would need a lot of bandwidth for cars to effectively keep track of each other.
No need for internet as cars would only need to communicate with other cars that are near them, not with cars on the other side of Earth. Short range wireless communication is easier to do that internet access, which requires access points while the car network may be mesh without an access point.
My company was bidding on parts of their infrastructure, and their requirements were bizarre to say the least.
It was clear that they must have had some narrow minded grid computing evangelists, and fad-word following wet-behind-the ears folks setting up the tenders.
Instead of focusing on their requirements, they specified a lot of detail about implementation.
If their company had been a runaway success, they soon would have had to spend a lot of money to make their back office and financial systems scalable (as in workable fro anything beyond trivial volumes.
Or even easier, monitor the Odometer!
*Nobody* in this ENTIRE conversation said that GPS was better than the other tools in all circumstances. It was YOU that said that they don't use it at all. The others are not trying to say that the other tools have been replaced by GPS (as you did in your initial post), but that GPS is still used in CONJUNCTION with other tools.
That's the kind of "prank" that will have the army knocking on your door.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
I don't think normal WLAN ranges would work for that anyway, WLAN has a range of what, 30 meters? If you really want to give cars internet connections you'll have to use cellphone networks instead.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
It would've also affected cheap GPS receivers which can barely pull in enough signal to get a fix as is. Like the ones in your smartphone, and showing up in cameras and a gazillion other gadgets. Dedicated GPS units like found in boat and car GPSes probably would've been ok. But the reason GPS has spread to gadgets like phones and cameras is because the receiver unit has been made so simple you can buy them for 10 cents in bulk. The only way you can make them that cheap is by sacrificing filtering and signal strength until you're at the very limits of SNR to get a GPS fix.
The range depends on the power used, antennas and the data rate. As cars most likely do not need 50mbps connection, the range would be longer. Also, in a mesh network, a node can forward packets between two nodes that are too far from each other to communicate directly.
No need for wireless access between cars either as the only data you need and can trust should be collectable from the system itself...
Driverless car 1: I'm going 30 and you're going 20, I better slow down...
Driverless car 2: No carry on, I'm going 30 too...
Driverless car 1: Oh, okay then...*^*&(^NO CARRIER
120 characters ought to be enough for anyone
But it could be useful if the safer option is chosen. For example, in your case car 1 should have slowed down. On the other hand, if, say, car in front detects a pothole it can announce its intention to slow down before applying the brakes.
Why the hell are you guys still going on about this?! Original posters that started this still has a point in that the people who should be concerned about GPS interference are geeks of Slashdot and are often expecting accurate GPS to be accurate do what they want to do with it.
Back on topic?!
120 characters ought to be enough for anyone
Except its intention to slow down is irrelevant and its slowing down should be evident when it hits the brakes... after all this thing needs to be able to drive with vehicles and pedestrians which cannot relay such information. The driverless car shouldn't need advanced warning.
Also, the safest thing is for the vehicles to slow down and stop - if you're expecting to listen to that, its a DoS attack
120 characters ought to be enough for anyone
It's really not modulation technique here. You could simply put a plain carrier with no modulation on the air and swamp the front end of the GPS receivers in the area which are trying to receive the small signals available from the satellites. Unless you can keep the power at or below the level that de-senses the GPS receivers operating in the adjacent band (i.e. following the FCC's established rules for the spectrum) you are interfering with GPS. So what kind of modulation technique are you suggesting here? Seems to me you are trying to violate the laws of physics too.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Everywhere around here for residential use, surveyors use GPS to locate existing reference markers, and from there, they use transits to locate the needed points. However, I think the commercial/road builders use GPS as their primary source, because they need speed more than they need high precision. They can't spend time continually hunting for stakes; and when a road is off by an inch but is well within its right of way, it just doesn't matter.
John
You can certainly use a gps to find an existing marker to start from - you just can't use the gps as the only tool. You still need to do the actual measurements the "old way" - in part because GPS is too accurate.
When a humungous plot of land is repeatedly sub-divided, it's very rare that the land is perfectly flat, so you have "slop" - an accumulation of inaccuracies because you're measurement includes slight slopes up and down.
For example, you have a plot that was laid out as 10 miles, 250', 4" wide on the map. You start at one corner. set your GPS, and get in your car, get on the highway, go 20 miles in a big loop (because the road doesn't follow the boundary), get off the highway at the point nearest your target, traipse around until the GPS says "you are here" - and notice that you're not exactly where the actual boundary marker is.
Why? Because there are always going to be problems translating a portion of a globe to a flat map, and from accumulations of errors (search for the word "misclosure").
And in any dispute, it doesn't matter what your gps says - the legal boundaries of a smaller plot are laid out in reference to local markers - so many feet north of point x, so many feet east from point y, whatever.
Seeing as the descriptions laid out in an existing "chain of title" for a small plot can easily go back 100 years or more, and changed as the original plot was repeatedly sub-divided, it's not like they were laid out with GPS accuracy :-)
Sure, eventually the maps will all be digitized, but there's a chance that we won't have the ability to maintain a GPS system 100 years from now, just as we can no longer go to the moon, at which point it's back to the old "rod and chain."
Current rates of population increase are impossible to sustain over the next 100 years, so as some point "something's gotta give". Human nature being what it is, it's a pretty safe bet that it will get ugly. Also, with a world-wide network of "smart dust", etc., who needs gps?
Let's call it what it is, Anti-Social Media.
then i will buy instagram for 100billion dollars....
The spectrum is not worth much, it's in the space-groundstation comms sections of the band and can only be used for weak signals. If you intend to build a massive fleet of satellites which will be beaming data to the ground, go for it. The quoted $4b is a small cost compared to the the R&D + launch costs for a fleet of satellites.
I guess the poster doesn't follow the business side of tech. Lucent is bell labs, at least what's left of it. They merged with Alcatel to avoid bankruptcy.