Slashdot Mirror
UK Government To Offer Free TV Filters For 4G Interference
judgecorp writes "4G services could interfere with terrestrial TV in the UK, so the government plans to offer one free filter for every household affected by the issue. The analysis suggests that 2.3 million households could be affected, but many of those have cable or satellite TV, so the plan might only need a million filters (each household only gets one, even if they have many TVs)."
Either it does or it doesn't. ... the filter won't help!
Unless the Govt doesn't even know the frequency bands involved into both the TV and the 4G.
In which case
Sent as ripples into the electromagnetic field. No single photon has been harmed in the process.
I'd like to be the company that got that contract.
...think of loads of invisible turds flying through the air in every direction. I hear political scientists use the term "regulatory capture" - because catching the largest turds thrown at them is all public servants can do under the new post-Thatcher civil service.
For example, the shortwave censorship which took the Soviets $100Ms to achieve has been successfully implemented by Ofcom by permitting the sale of noisy "Ethernet over powerline" devices.
4G basically means that one person can get fast mobile connectivity to the Internet in the ideal world where each person has access to a mast which he's almost standing underneath. In the real world, it will be yet another tremendous waste of resources so that people can fondle their electronic balls on the move instead of actually talking to the people around them. (People who have real work to do involving communication with others already have 3G or make use of other licensed spectrum.)
In both the UK and the US, they handed out free decoders during the digital switch. They know very well that were a significent portion of the population to lose television, crime rates would go up and there may be riots in the street. Panem et circenses, never fails.
I am sure quite some of the households that are on cable or satellite will still request their filters. And pass on to their neghbours, colleagues (who need more than one), or sell on ebay. Or just give the dog to play with. It's free, not?
Vajk
If the government gives them out "free", it means that the taxpayers pay for them.
Why not force the 4G providers, who are causing the interference, to foot the bill . . . ?
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
For a few more months in the UK analog TV will use 470-862MHz
The last few analog transmitters will soon be switched off,
the replacement digital transmitters will just use 470-790MHZ.
806-854MHz was auctioned off in 2009. 790-806MHz may be used for other tings in areas where it is not used for digital TV.
The worst case scenario for TV interference is roughly this.
Someone's house is on the edge of the coverage area of a digital TV transmitter which is on the highest multiplex frequency. They are 35miles from the transmitter and have a big TV antenna on a twenty foot pole on the chimney with a wideband preamp on the pole.
The TV signal is just barely strong enough to give a picture and only freeze occasionally when a pigeon flies in front of the antenna.
The TV signal is 8MHz wide ending at 790MHz.
A mobile internet base station push out 100 watts is installed 100 meters away from the house using frequencies starting just 16MHz higher at 806MHz.
In terms of power the mobile internet signal might be 70dB stronger, that's ten million times the received power.
The base station signal is strong enough that it overloads the masthead preamp. It dosn't even matter if the TV decoder can handle a massive signal close to a very weak signal, (and it probably can't) because the preamp is clipping and the weak TV signal is lost before it even gets to the TV.
In theory with good planning will mitigate this considerably.
In practise vast amounts of existing TV equipment is specifically designed to receive and amplify the frequencies that have been sold oof for other uses.
Mobile applications need lots of base stations close to the users.
Inevitably lots of people will have a base station on a tall building that they can see out of the window in an area where the TV transmitter is twenty miles away.
Certainly they are not free, but the taxpayers might not actually be paying for these since HMG sold (licensed) the 4G space to the telecoms firms in the first place. The idealist in me thinks that the filters would be paid for out of those funds.
Burns: We're building a casino!
McAllister: Arrr. Give me 5 minutes.
We've known this since February.
In the US, TV channels have been reclaimed for cellular service twice. First channels 70-83 were turned into the original 800Mhz cellular range (really 850Mhz) and now 60-76 has been carved out for the new 700MHz 3G/4G frequencies.
How is this somehow not sensible?
The US has interference issues as much as Australia does as much as the UK does. Frequencies which used to be TV channels now have (much stronger) cellular transmissions on them. Because TVs were designed to tune to those frequencies, they don't have blocking filters for those frequencies, making interference possible.
In Australia, 126MHz of bandwidth will be reassigned from UHF TV to cellular.
Interference in the US has been minimal (at most) and I doubt the UK or Australia will have much difficulty either.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
If the government gives them out "free", it means that the taxpayers pay for them.
Why not force the 4G providers, who are causing the interference, to foot the bill . . . ?
Because the government hopes to make a metric shedload of money "for the taxpayer*" when it auctions off the old analog TV frequencies to the 4G providers later this year (it worked when they auctioned off the 3G spectrum in the 90s). This should be loose change in comparison.
* Don't hold your breath for your rebate cheque, though :-)
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
That's exactly what's happening: "Costs will be met by the winner of a spectrum auction later this year."
If the government gives them out "free", it means that the taxpayers pay for them.
Why not force the 4G providers, who are causing the interference, to foot the bill . . . ?
£180 million is top-sliced from the 4G auction; the government will make up the rest, if any. They probably bring in more money for the taxpayer that way, than if the bandwidth came with an unknown liability,.
Well, the 4G license purchaser will indeed bear the costs for the units, but aside from that being part of the spectrum auctions terms and conditions, why the fuck should they? Its the Government that has decided "we shall sell these ranges of spectrums to two incompatible user bases, and we know there will be interference between them" - why shouldnt the government bear the costs of that decision?
Because 4G providers are corporations, while taxpayers are mere humans, and poor humans at that.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
Why do you need more than one? Can't you just install this before you split the signal? I doubt people actually have multiple cables entering their home.
Where I live we've only just gone fully digital - well since Sept 2011.
This meant that I went from having "sometimes poor reception" (about 30% power) and certain channels were affected more than others, and it seemed to be many factors - night time, birds flying, phases of the moon. To always having good reception (90%+ most of the time), and also being able to pick up another region - so I get Yorkshire and Lincolnshire.
So, now they pull this out of the hat! Yea we've moved everything, turned off analogue TV and made it all digital. Oh, but you might lose reception as we're turning 4G where the old analogue used to be, and the frequencies are right next to each other.
When Analog and Digital were running, Analogue was at 100% power transmission and digital much less so it didn't interfere with Analogue, why don't they do the same? Probably as they wouldn't then be able to sell 4G to as many companies.
try to make ends meet, you're a slave to money, then you die
Do people still watch television? Why?
And where do telecoms get their money? All they do is pass on their costs to their customers.
Name some mechanism where "the taxpayers" do NOT pay for this. In the end, all $$$ comes from "the taxpayers." If "the taxpayer" goes out and buys a filter himself, "the taxpayer" pays for it. If some company buys it, "the taxpayer" pays for it thru the price of the product or service the company produces or performs. If the gov't pays for it, "the taxpayer" pays for it in the end. Etc. There's only 1source of money, really, and that is "the taxpayer," so unavoidably, "the taxpayer" will pay for it.
I spend my time in poor countries like the Philippines and they had 4G last year. The UK is still talking about this in the future tense? Is Britain copying the US so much that they are even getting stuck in the dark ages with their phone system now?
I love stacking my barbecues in the shed at the end of summer - you can't beat a bit of grill on grill action.
It's not like the telecoms companies would reduce bills if they got the bandwidth that teeny bit cheaper.
But even if they would, who cares!? The people paying ofr this ar e the ones who are benefiting, so they should damn well pay.
Free roll of tinfoil with every new or used TV!
Filters out those nasty 4G signals!
Sig. Sig. Sputnik
If the telecom customer pays for it then people who don't do business with 4G providers won't pay for it.
British TV is hard to follow and not all that entertaining. BBC just keeps repeating the same news all day. I usually just turn it off and go out for a beer.
"Free" The worst word ever.
This word makes the stupid stop thinking.
The word should be banned. There is no such thing as free. The use of the word is almost always a ruse. A ruse to suck in the stupid and sell them on a product or idea.
"Free Shipping!"
"A second set absolutely Free!"
"Free Health Care"
"A free meal with the purchase of another meal of equal or greater value."
All things designed to make you think you are getting a deal when you are not.
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
As the GP said, this likely comes from the money telcos paid for the bandwidth, so the users of the bandwidth are paying indirectly, not the taxpayers. If you don't have a phone that uses these freqs, you're not paying a dime.
Free Martian Whores!