LightSquared Wants To Share Weather-Balloon Frequencies for LTE

IDG News Service reports (as carried by PC World) that LightSquared, having lost some of the spectrum they'd hoped to use for a nationwide LTE network because of worries it would interfere with GPS service, has a new plan: to use some of the spectrum currently reserved by the federal government for uses like weather-balloon communications. From the article: "The new plan would give the carrier 30MHz of frequencies on which to operate the LTE network. That's 10MHz less than it had wanted but still comparable to the amount of spectrum Verizon Wireless and AT&T are using for their LTE systems, which in most areas use just 20MHz. Wireless network speeds are determined partly by how much spectrum the network uses, so LightSquared might be able to deliver a competitive service for its planned coverage area of 260 million U.S. residents."

Comments

Some people

[mindwhip]

Just don't know when to fold.

Re:Some people

[icebike]

The GPS industry didn't screw them over. It was there first, and it is far more important to EVERYBODY than yet another carrier building a network on the cheap.

That being said, if weather baloons is all there is in this proposed frequency range, I say let them have it, as long as they provide unlimited sim cards to weather baloon services and let them swap in cheap cellular radios for what ever they are using now.

Somehow, I suspect they have glossed over what other services might be in those frequency ranges.

Re:Some people

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't view public use of GPS as more important than public broadband.

They need to build their kit so it isn't hampered by use of nearby frequencies. It is 100% the fault of shoddy GPS components/implementations.

Re:Some people

[icebike]

I don't view public use of GPS as more important than public broadband.

Your views don't matter.

The country as a whole, actually, the world as a whole, has decided that GPS location is far more important than yet another boradband provider.

The "kit" in the field was there first, and you can't tell every owner of every GPS equipped device in the world that they have to replace their devices just so this bunch of clowns can make money.

Re:Some people

[Anonymous Coward]

" It is 100% the fault of shoddy deities with poorly thought out laws of physics"

FTFY

You can't here a whisper from 20 yards away if the guy sitting next to you is screaming down his mobile phone.

Re:Some people

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Least they are not going down without a fight after the GPS industry screwed them over. They PAID spectrum to start a business on but interference with GPS devices WHICH clearly is the fault of companies that made the GPS devices screwed them bad.

They paid for spectrum that was specified for satellite to ground communication. They obtained a waiver to use that spectrum for ground-ground on the condition that they not interfere with adjacent satellite to ground users. They failed to do that, and so their conditional waiver doesn't hold. They are still free to use the spectrum they bought on the terms under which they bought it, they just don't have any business model there because their entire business model hinged on the gamble that they failed to pull off.

At this point, they seem to have moved to plan B 'Act injured and demand that the feds give them a handout because they deserve to succeed'.

Re:Some people

[Lumpy]

News flash: You are not important at all. your views dont matter to anybody. You also know both of those facts, because you dont have the balls to post under your account instead of responding by using the AC setting.

If you had ANY education at all you would understand why the GPS system is a protected service. I suggest learning how to use a computer and then the internet , as well as a tricky technology called a search engine in order to educate yourself on the subject.

Re:Some people

[Anonymous Coward]

The power line signal is going to be used for the black helicopter coordination and mind control rays, so they've got to find some spectrum somewhere.

Betcha the mortality rate among ham radio operators is above average, now that the hams successfully stopped Plan A for using power line signaling.

No, I'm not paranoid, I just take dictation and type it here.
What, like you can't hear the same voices?

Re:Some people

[Glendale2x]

That's an outright lie. Your comment is bad and you should feel bad.

Re:Some people

[icebike]

You can tell them to keep their transmissions from bleeding into the spectrum that someone else purchased, and if they have to upgrade their equipment to do that, then tough titties. Just because there was an empty lot next to your house for years doesn't mean you can keep tossing your trash into it when someone else buys the land and wants to build a house there. Hell, you should've been fined and told to stop that years ago instead of being left to muck it up in the first place.

Shows what you know.
GPS receivers do not transmit. Therefore they do not bleed.
Seems you are pretty well behind the knowledge curve on this issue.

The problem was also that these clowns bought spectrum specifically designated for Orbit-to-surface transmissions and then decided they were going to skip the whole satellite thing and use the spectrum from ground towers.

Re:Some people

[Anonymous Coward]

Just because you don't mind giving up your privacy doesn't mean others feel that way. It's bad enough that computers can already link an AC comment to an individual, there is no reason to make it easier for them just because a few people want to be ****'s about it.

Re:Some people

[cusco]

If your privacy is so valuable that no one should know how you feel about a topic then you shouldn't be posting your opinions on the Internet to start with.

Re:Some people

[nagasrinivas]

Really? So there are only two states: be silent or tell everything about you.

Re:Some people

[Anonymous Coward]

GPS wasn't bleeding into anything. The issue was that LightSquared got their spectrum on the agreement it wouldn't fuck with GPS. Guess what their use of the spectrum was going to do? Oh, yeah. It was going to fuck with GPS since they were going to transmit at a power level many magnitudes more than GPS effectively drowing it out.

Re:Some people

[Sulphur]

" It is 100% the fault of shoddy deities with poorly thought out laws of physics"

FTFY

You can't here a whisper from 20 yards away if the guy sitting next to you is screaming down his mobile phone.

There there, he has GPS for that.

Re:Some people

[Anonymous Coward]

Least they are not going down without a fight after the GPS industry screwed them over. They PAID spectrum to start a business on but interference with GPS devices WHICH clearly is the fault of companies that made the GPS devices screwed them bad.

They knew they would screw with GPS before they started . they are just a bunch on no goods out to cause as much hassle as possible there is plenty of spectrum they just want to use what is already in use they need to go away and fold or start behaving like a company that has sanity at it's core look for vacant spectrum . If they keep this game up they will be railroaded out of existence
bye bye trash & Co ..

Re:Some people

[crypticedge]

Use a nom de plume? That's what sane people who still want some level of privacy do.

Re:Some people

[PixetaledPikachu]

Now let's hope that he doesn't upgrade his iphone to ios 6

Re:Some people

[FireFury03]

Least they are not going down without a fight after the GPS industry screwed them over. They PAID spectrum to start a business on but interference with GPS devices WHICH clearly is the fault of companies that made the GPS devices screwed them bad.

They PAID for spectrum which was designated to be used for a different purpose, then tried to convince everyone that there was no problem with changing the purpose of that spectrum, even though it caused interference for existing users of neighbouring spectrum.

Re:Some people

[Anonymous Coward]

The United States National Weather Service and the weather services of most other countries use radiosondes that have very low power transmitters to return the signal to the ground station. Further the radiosondes use GPS fixes to determine the wind speed and direction. Allowing LightSquared to use the same bands as the radiosondes would essential do the same thing to the radiosondes that it does to GPS receivers. /sarcasm
Then of course we all know that accurate weather forecasts are no where near as important as being to watch television on you cell phone. /sarcasm

Re:Some people

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's what LightSquared told the FCC: "We want to build a ground-based LTE network augmented with low-power satellite transmissions to fill in the gaps." They told the FCC this because that is what the law allows. What LightSquared then proceeded to do was to plan a high-power, satellite-based system with a few ground stations basically as window dressing to make it look like they were complying with the law. They slid in a little grease here and there to smooth things out. TSHTF when word got out on just what LightSquared was up to. The real heavy hitters were the (U.S.) DoD, which built GPS in the first place and the civil aviation industry. Think about this: You're on a airliner using WAAS-enabled GPS navigation on approach to very foggy JFK (New York) and suddenly the GPS signal is totally degraded. Brings a whole new meaning to "Boy, that sucks!" Better hope Capt. Sully's protege is flying.

Re:Some people

[deadweight]

Bullshit! They bought satellite spectrum and tried to re-purpose it for terrestrial use. There is a reason that spectrum was NOT to be used for ground level transmissions.

Re:Some people

[rijrunner]

If the nearby frequencies were not 19 orders of magnitude more powerful, this would not be a problem..

Seriously, to make a filter that would work here would render any receiver unusable.. Even Lightsquared cutting off 99.999% of their signal in the GPS ranges meant the GPS receiver would have needed to pull their signal out of another signal that was 13 orders of magnitude more powerful. It would be like trying to pick out a whisper from 40 feet away in a rock concert while standing in front of the speakers..

Re:Some people

[Anonymous Coward]

No, they bought a license only for satellite communications and then tried to use it for much more profitable terrestrial services, where the license would have cost much more. That spectrum was suitable only for satellites because of ITU planning protecting other existing services like GPS. Lightsquared attempted to make a windfall profit by abusing the planning rules and it failed because it discovered that the reason for those rules was quite sound.

Re:Some people

[Anonymous Coward]

It is probably the weather balloon tracking radars that use those frequencies - and they cant share spectrum with cell phones.

Amazing Resilience

[Anonymous Coward]

In the face of a failing business model, this company's management displays a remarkably creative "stayin'-alive" style of character. Too bad disco is dead and they will most likely follow. At least the venture capital behind it all will be able to claim that they backed a workhorse with a never-say-die, can-do mentality.

Range of that Weather-Balloon's WiFi

[epSos-de]

I swear, I first thought they were going to enable the Weather-Balloons to offer LTE to customers. Imagine the mess when the balloon leaves your reception area. And also, Why would Weather-Balloons need that much frequency juice in the first place ?

Re:Range of that Weather-Balloon's WiFi

[Anonymous Coward]

Using weather balloons would have been a better idea then their original business plan.

Re:Range of that Weather-Balloon's WiFi

[vlm]

And also, Why would Weather-Balloons need that much frequency juice in the first place ?

Its older, cheaper, disposable tech. Might only be 400 baud downlink but usually a pretty wide signal. Simple FM/FSK modulation maybe. The problem is you launch 10 to different altitudes, due to frequency drift from being cold (cheap, remember?) you might find that a struggle to make them all fit without interfering with each other. On a boring fall day you don't launch 10 at a time, but for all I know in a hurricane (literally) you might drop 10 at a time.

Congress already told NOAA to stop using the bottom half or so of the band. The problem is radio allocations are done by the ITU... This is the usual american arrogance problem where it turns out the FCC only regulates inside the US. If someone in Canada wants to launch at 1770 MHz, which is well within ITU regulations, short of bombing the Canadian weather station I'm not sure what they intend to do about it. Just accept the interference I guess.

Also the 1700 MHz band has coprimary with radiosondes and met satellites. The weather satellite people are going to be pissed if their frequencies are reallocated only over the USA.

Re:Range of that Weather-Balloon's WiFi

[icebike]

Meh, give NOAA sim cards and get off those old hand built single purpose radios and let then use cheap cell radio chips.
If this tech is cheap enough for every speed camera in the country its cheap enough for a throw away baloon radio.

Re:Range of that Weather-Balloon's WiFi

[Anonymous Coward]

Was the "arrogant American" comment really required to make your point?

Re:Range of that Weather-Balloon's WiFi

[FrostedWheat]

You don't realise how cheap the sondes are. There are hundreds launched every day, and they don't get them back. They have to be incredibly cheap and there are no GSM technologies cheaper than a simple FM radio.
There are technical limitations too - GSM only works up to about 5km, above that they will likely fail. Sondes usually fly to about 30km.

Re:Range of that Weather-Balloon's WiFi

[Anonymous Coward]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_phones_on_aircraft#Cell_tower_channel_re-use

The technology may be cheap enough to use in a speed camera, but then again a speed camera is not hovering a thousand feet or more off the surface of the planet. There are other issues at play here, the cellular networks unsuitability for use at high altitudes is one of them. I've worked with weather tech up north (in Canada) before and all their equipment was through-hole with lead based solder specifically for in-field repairability and general durability. I no longer work with those guys, but I can imagine they'd all freak out if they had to switch to BGA (not even surface mount!) just to support a 3G modem and all the support hardware that requires.

Remind me why everything needs to change because LightSquared believes they're entitled to profitability again?

Re:Range of that Weather-Balloon's WiFi

[Lumpy]

Meh, force AT&T and Verizon to make Cellphone towers to beam the signal UP instead of down to the ground to satisfy a bunch of whily rich guys that dont know anything about technology. I'm sure they will do it for free and not pass the new fees along to the consumer.

Re:Range of that Weather-Balloon's WiFi

[Anonymous Coward]

While we are at it, lets give ham radio operators free cellphones with unlimited minutes. The FCC can recoup the ham spectrum allocations and auction it off to corporations that could use it more effectively to make money. The upside is, those unsightly antennas and towers in my neighborhood, which ruin my view of the skyline and interfere with my soaps, will be gone forever.

Re:Range of that Weather-Balloon's WiFi

[vlm]

Was the "arrogant American" comment really required to make your point?

Yes. All we need is federal approval from the FCC because we're the worlds empire, stated by someone who doesn't know anything about the frequency allocation process..

The reality is the ITU and its friends regulate international allocations in 3 regions for the world, and then individual countries allocate within the regional international allocations. Its run mostly by techs, and has worked remarkably well.

I guess a close internet analogy would be some .com demanding ARIN take ip addresses from, say, AfriNIC, without talking to IANA (or AfriNIC) about it first.

Re:Range of that Weather-Balloon's WiFi

[Anonymous Coward]

Lol, and a twitter account for the CW fans

Re:Range of that Weather-Balloon's WiFi

[gstrickler]

I'm not going defend LS (they're just whining because they're not getting their way), but if they're willing to pay for changing the weather balloons to another (lower) frequency, this might be viable. The weather sondes could still be made cheaply if they were moved to something like the old TV frequencies, possibly even a whitespace frequency. The lower frequency would propagate better, and possibly require less power. The bandwidth, data rate, and power levels shouldn't be a problem. The ground stations might need upgrades to receive the lower frequency, and LS should have t pay for those, as well as any development costs for new sondes.

So, while I'm skeptical, it might be viable IF LS is willing to pay for the changes. Of course, this only applies if weather balloons are the only use of the frequencies in question, AND they demonstrate that their use won't cause interference with GPS (still close in frequency) or other nearby frequencies.

Just pay for proper spectrum already!

[gman003]

Second verse, same as the first. LightSquared just doesn't want to pay for spectrum. First they tried muscling in on satellite frequencies, claiming to the FCC that they'd primarily be satellite-based while telling everyone else that they'd be terrestrial only. And of course, they got caught because pretty much *any* terrestrial-strength broadcast is going to swamp out any satellite-based stuff on the same frequencies.

So now they're trying it again, trying to squeeze in on some pre-established frequencies. I don't claim to know any technical details of weather-balloon communication, but I do know this: if it *were* possible to safely share those frequencies with LTE-like communications, it would likely have been done already. Given their prior track record, LS is going to have to argue pretty effectively to convince me.

Look, LightSquared. You should've just paid for actual spectrum you could use before. You acted like a cheap bastard and tried to use the wrong parts because it was cheaper, and then you cried when it didn't work.

Re:Just pay for proper spectrum already!

[Nethead]

Reminds me of those trying to get the DOD, et al to give up their legacy IPv4 space, so they can make money, of course.

Re:Just pay for proper spectrum already!

[ColdWetDog]

Although I don't have much respect for Lightsquared, they do bring up an interesting issue - making sure that the available radio frequency spectrum is being used for the 'best' purposes. Of course, 'best' as defined by Lightsquared is what makes money for them, but it could be argued that given advancements in radiotechnology and lessening importance of weather balloons, this switch might be advantageous to society at large.

I'd feel better in the FCC agreed and auctioned the spectrum rather that give it to the ol squeaky wheel.

Re:Just pay for proper spectrum already!

[godel_56]

Look, LightSquared. You should've just paid for actual spectrum you could use before. You acted like a cheap bastard and tried to use the wrong parts because it was cheaper, and then you cried when it didn't work.

You don't have to pay for spectrum, just pay for congressmen. It's much cheaper and more effective.

I'll bet that's what LightSquared are doing right now, behind the scenes.

Re:Just pay for proper spectrum already!

[alostpacket]

Eh? They bought spectrum but were not allowed to use it for interference with neighboring spectrum...

http://www.forbes.com/sites/danielfisher/2011/12/21/falcones-lightsquared-faces-enemies-on-all-sides/

He thought he’d cleared the last hurdle standing between him and the trade of his life in January 2011, when the FCC granted LightSquared permission to operate a combined cellular/satellite communications network in the so-called L-band, adjacent to the frequencies GPS uses. That theoretically made Falcone’s 56 megahertz of radio spectrum, purchased for about $2 billion in a series of transactions a few years ago....

/em mine

Re:Just pay for proper spectrum already!

[DarthBart]

It'll be a long while before something will "lessen the importance of weather balloons". Unless you can figure out a way to measure air pressure, humidity, temperature, and wind direction from 0-70k ft regularly without launching balloons or dropsondes, they'll be needed. And if you can figure out a way to do it, the folks who fly the Hurricane Hunter aircraft would like a word with you so they can stop flying in and around tropical cyclones.

Re:Just pay for proper spectrum already!

[hairyfeet]

Uhhh...BAD analogy friend, because if the DoD is sitting on a class A and only using a couple of thousand addresses you could redistribute all of their unused ones and not change a single thing about how they work whereas with their first idea Lightsquared bought MUCH cheaper than normal priced communication frequencies because it was SAT ONLY and thus cheaper because you had to pay 100s of millions for the bird and launch, only Lightsquared didn't want to actually USE them for sats, they want to use them on the ground which would wipe out those that had already put up their sats" by overpowering their signals.

Now here we see them again, wanting to pay little to nothing for a band ALREADY IN USE by balloons and weather sats which would again lose their ability to communicate while Lightsquared makes out like a bandit on their new franchise. With those sitting on millions of IP addresses redistributing the ones they aren't using while leaving them...ohh lets say 10,000+ extras in case they have huge growth down the line, would not affect what they are doing now one little bit, Lightsquared would royally fuck over the ones that paid to actually use that bandwidth correctly, only for them to again make out like bandits by getting the spectrum at fire sale prices.

Please die already Lightsquared, nobody wants you, you're just trying to fuck people for your own gain, you're another VC funded leech on the ass of society and you needed to be burned off and disposed of. Either get your VC cronies to cough up the funds to buy spectrum legitimately, which of course they won't because the whole way they planned to make mad monies was by getting spectrum at fire sale prices instead of paying fair market value, or go the fuck away.

Re:Just pay for proper spectrum already!

[alostpacket]

Ah never mind -- I missed your point, sorry -- you are saying they are playing a two-faced game. They very well may be.

Re:Just pay for proper spectrum already!

[Forever Wondering]

Second verse, same as the first. LightSquared just doesn't want to pay for spectrum. First they tried muscling in on satellite frequencies, claiming to the FCC that they'd primarily be satellite-based while telling everyone else that they'd be terrestrial only. And of course, they got caught because pretty much *any* terrestrial-strength broadcast is going to swamp out any satellite-based stuff on the same frequencies.

IIRC, LightSquared wanted to use spectrum adjacent to satellite GPS frequencies (e.g. they wanted to use channel 2 and GPS was using channel 3). This should have been fine. But, because most GPS receivers are so cheap/poorly designed/non-conforming they are susceptible to cross-channel interference. It was the GPS manufacturers that messed up. But, because there are already a host of non-conforming GPS units in the field, the FCC, as a practical matter said [in effect], you can't do this because of current reality.

This is a problem that radio amateurs used to have. They would be transmitting on their assigned frequencies. But, their assigned frequencies would interfere with an intermediate stage of a cheap/unshielded TV set (because the TV set was misdesigned) and the amateur's neighbor would be complaining. In this case, any complaint to the FCC would result in a "fix your TV set" and not action against the ham operator.

The only difference here is the safety factor. Too many misdesigned GPS's and the FCC erred on the side of safety.

Re:Just pay for proper spectrum already!

[Anonymous Coward]

Drones?

Re:Just pay for proper spectrum already!

[Anonymous Coward]

Launch, record, recover. No sense they need to be broadcasting in real time.

Re:Just pay for proper spectrum already!

[jd2112]

Look, LightSquared. You should've just paid for actual spectrum you could use before. You acted like a cheap bastard and tried to use the wrong parts because it was cheaper, and then you cried when it didn't work.

You don't have to pay for spectrum, just pay for congressmen. It's much cheaper and more effective.

I'll bet that's what LightSquared are doing right now, behind the scenes.

At&T and Verizon beat you to it. There're isn't much if any spectrum left.

Re:Just pay for proper spectrum already!

[Anonymous Coward]

We've been over this 100 times every time this comes up.
The spectrum they licensed was intended for satellite use only.
They wanted to use it for terrestrial broadcast.
The neighboring spectrum was also allocated with satellite use in mind.

You aren't allowed to build a factory in a residential area either.

Re:Just pay for proper spectrum already!

[Anonymous Coward]

Lol, single-word owned.

Re:Just pay for proper spectrum already!

[Anonymous Coward]

at 70kft?

Re:Just pay for proper spectrum already!

[drinkypoo]

A weather balloon is what a drone for this purpose looks like.

Re:Just pay for proper spectrum already!

[gman003]

No, that entire block is allocated to satellite use. GPS uses one of those channels, but all the rest are used (or designated to be used) by satellites. Using any of them at terrestrial power levels would basically cause problems for *any* satellite communications in that range.

The whole "cheap GPS receivers" response is just more LightSquared PR bullshit. It would take an absurdly good design to filter out a signal that is a) only a few MHz away, b) is being pumped out far closer, and c) is being pumped out orders of magnitude higher than any satellite can manage.

Re:Just pay for proper spectrum already!

[BlueStrat]

Drones?

You expect a drone to fly through a hurricane? That's not easy even for large multiple-engine jet aircraft with skilled and experienced pilots in the cockpit.

Strat

Re:Just pay for proper spectrum already!

[Anonymous Coward]

IMO the world just needs to standardize on LTE (like it previously nearly standardized GSM to just 4 bands) and not use any other damned frequency. Figure out what else is on those frequencies worldwide and do a spectrum swap. Then when LTE advacned, and whatever 5G, 6G tech comes out, they can easily be told to re-use 1/2 to 1/3 of the spectrum they already own without adding more stupidity to the process.

The "discount" carriers right now are failing (including t-mobile) because they made business decisions pre-iPhone that made it so that the device won't work on their network, arrogantly believing that any old phone is good enough. "Any" phone was good enough because they were all equally crappy until iPhone changed the game. Now you're paying into a losing business model if you don't support the iPhone.

So I don't see Lightsquared getting anywhere. If anything they were screwed the minute they tried to make a satellite system.

Re:Just pay for proper spectrum already!

[Forever Wondering]

No, that entire block is allocated to satellite use. GPS uses one of those channels, but all the rest are used (or designated to be used) by satellites. Using any of them at terrestrial power levels would basically cause problems for *any* satellite communications in that range.

The whole "cheap GPS receivers" response is just more LightSquared PR bullshit. It would take an absurdly good design to filter out a signal that is a) only a few MHz away, b) is being pumped out far closer, and c) is being pumped out orders of magnitude higher than any satellite can manage.

Uh, try reading the Forbes article cited by another commenter (I had read it back in the day, and just reread it now, amongst others).

The filter isn't all that difficult, regardless of power level. The GPS receivers are deliberately trying to receive out-of-band spectrum that was not licensed to them to compensate for their cheapness. Even Garmin and Trimble knew there were problems with their equipment and had been cautioning investors about the problem since 2001 (before LightSquared).

Also, the FCC had licensed parts of L-Band for terrestrial transmission use years earlier to others. It's also used for terrestrial cellular. So, it's not strictly "for satellite downlink only" as some have suggested.

I have no association with LightSquared whatsoever. Regardless of how unsavory Falcone may seem in general, it begs the question: If it's all PR, why is Congress now investigating the FCC's conduct in this matter (e.g. LightSquared's $3-4B investment going down the drain) when the FCC granted various approvals along the way. If the FCC had been more awake, it might have stopped this after $50M down the drain instead of $4B. That's what Congress wants to know [and I do, too].

Currently, two wrongs are making a right: GPS's initial screwup and the FCC not ordering a massive recall/retrofit of all non-conforming GPS receivers (a bit impractical, I realize) to be paid for by the GPS manufacturers (who caused the problem in the first place). It seems fair to give LightSquared some alternate spectrum that they can use to compensate them for the $2B lost on the spectrum that they already paid for.

The currently proposed weather balloon spectrum is but one option. If that entails retuning weather balloons to use alternate spectrum that they could use that LightSquared could not, the FCC (with "help" from Congress) might just do that. It's a far more pragmatic solution to redo a few hundred devices than to retrofit 100M GPS receivers.

Re:Just pay for proper spectrum already!

[Anonymous Coward]

The filter isn't all that difficult, regardless of power level.

Uh, you do realize that the GPS signal is already below the thermal noise threshold, right? Furthermore, you do realize that, due to pesky physics, any filter reduces the passthrough signal? No doubt you also realize that, due to pesky physics, the billion-times-stronger-signal LS ground stations would have harmonics dissipating energy in the GPS bands?

The filter isn't all that difficult, regardless of power level. The GPS receivers are deliberately trying to receive out-of-band spectrum that was not licensed to them to compensate for their cheapness. Even Garmin and Trimble knew there were problems with their equipment and had been cautioning investors about the problem since 2001 (before LightSquared).

Damn straight. It was a conspiracy to put LS out of business; a conspiracy so vast and intricate that it started a decade before the innocent, virtuous underdog LS demanded the modification of the terms under which they purchased their spectrum license. Besides, everyone knows that you get a better quality of signal if your receiver deliberately receives on other bands. Occam would be proud of your incisive analysis of the situation.

Or, perhaps GPS manufacturers didn't put tighter bandpass filters on their receivers because those filters would further attenuate the GPS signal that is already below the noise floor. Just a thought. Nevermind, the conspiracy makes more sense.

If the FCC had been more awake, it might have stopped this after $50M down the drain instead of $4B. That's what Congress wants to know [and I do, too].

If only a nanny government would have protected them from their stupidity and lack of undergraduate RF communication theory, they would have saved money!

No, this was the correct outcome: the FCC raised an eyebrow when LS claimed they could make this work (I mean, this doesn't require a PhD in RF to understand there's probably no way this would end in success), but allowed LS to try anyway after they insisted they wanted to do so. Predictably, LS failed to achieve the standard.

I suppose you would prefer a government that prevents possible failure by restricting everything to known, proven approaches, but I don't. The freedom to fail is fundamental.

It seems fair to give LightSquared some alternate spectrum that they can use to compensate them for the $2B lost on the spectrum that they already paid for.

No, that would not be fair. LightSquared thought they could pull a fast one on the laws of physics by acquiring spectrum with the deliberate, ulterior intent to repurpose it for terrestrial broadcast. There's a reason they obtained the spectrum so cheaply: it can't be used by billion-times-stronger-than-GPS terrestrial broadcast stations without interfering. Had they chosen more appropriate spectrum then this issue would be moot. None of the major carriers attempted to do what LS did because the major carriers aren't retarded like LS is.

If a house flipper were to buy an already-condemned house for $50 and then the government fails to rescind the condemnation after they haphazardly attempt to shore up the roof with $10 worth of rotten 2x4's, perhaps you believe the poor house flipper has been wronged. Perhaps, in your mind, they should seek redress from the government for not protecting them from my own stupidity and therefore they should be entitled to receive a different, uncondemned house for free from the government.

BTW, LS already laid off their technical staff. At this point it's likely that all they have left are execs and a legal department whose job it is to rent-seek. They are going to be this decade's SCO.

Re:Just pay for proper spectrum already!

[Agripa]

Uh, try reading the Forbes article cited by another commenter (I had read it back in the day, and just reread it now, amongst others).

LightSquared has been advertising some magical RF filter without identifying the price, power required, or form factor. If they have a working model, where is a picture of it? Has anybody independently measured or duplicated its performance?

The filter isn't all that difficult, regardless of power level. The GPS receivers are deliberately trying to receive out-of-band spectrum that was not licensed to them to compensate for their cheapness. Even Garmin and Trimble knew there were problems with their equipment and had been cautioning investors about the problem since 2001 (before LightSquared).

Power level is not a problem in this case but in the more general case it is. High Q filters by their very nature are susceptible to dielectric breakdown at high power levels where high power can be as low as 1/2 watt. In large ones at RF, you usually get a nice blue corona discharge around the tuning structures which may fail. Integrated filters just silently self destruct.

Consumer GPS receivers could have better RF filtering but there is no RF filter that can accomplish what LightSquared PR is advertising within the small form factors that are common today. All direct conversion based receivers have problems with front end selectivity leading to overload but better superheterodyne designs would be significantly larger and require more power.

Re:Just pay for proper spectrum already!

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a reason they obtained the spectrum so cheaply: it can't be used by billion-times-stronger-than-GPS terrestrial broadcast stations without interfering.

You (or somebody) keeps saying that. So I have a question. Why can't Lightsquared build towers that operate at power levels comparable to GPS signals? GPS receivers demonstrate that it's possible for a handheld device to receive GPS reasonably well, below the noise floor or not (and nearly every smartphone does, already), so why must these hypothetical towers operate at such radically higher power levels?

Re:Just pay for proper spectrum already!

[HornWumpus]

They thought owning a white house was enough. Too bad for them.

Re:Just pay for proper spectrum already!

[kubernet3s]

Imagine if your LTE was as reliable as your GPS. Go ahead, I'll wait. You'd get dropped calls on humid days: and you can forget about serving anyone living in a city.

Re:Just pay for proper spectrum already!

[Anonymous Coward]

You (or somebody) keeps saying that.

Heh, well, I was not the other poster(s?)

Why can't Lightsquared build towers that operate at power levels comparable to GPS signals? GPS receivers demonstrate that it's possible for a handheld device to receive GPS reasonably well, below the noise floor or not (and nearly every smartphone does, already), so why must these hypothetical towers operate at such radically higher power levels?

Okay, I will admit that I am speaking in conjecture in this response. However, it stands to reason that all of this is about coverage. LS' original plan was to use their satellite *only* (which would have been fine), but then they decided they needed all these terrestrial base stations to make their plans viable. Apparently, LS planned for up to 15 KW base stations (approx. 72 dBm), right in your locale. GPS satellites transmit 30 Watts and are 20,200 km away.

I imagine that it would require, in technical terms, a *metric fuckton* of terrestrial stations to get any sort of decent coverage if their transmission power were dialed back enough to avoid competing with GPS (GPS signal at receivers is typically around -130 dBm).

Re:Just pay for proper spectrum already!

[Neil Boekend]

Pathfinder raised the altitude record for solar-powered aircraft as well as propeller-driven aircraft to 71,530 feet (21,800 m) on July 7, 1997.

Re:Just pay for proper spectrum already!

[heypete]

GPS transmits at modest powers at the source but the signals are extremely weak by the time they reach the earth. GPS signals can't penetrate building materials thicker than a modest window (and even then signal is attenuated significantly) -- LightSquared transmitting at power levels that would have similar signal strength for receivers on the ground would have no functional purpose for terrestrial transmitters.

Also, GPS transmits at extremely low data rates because it is impractical to transmit at high speeds with very low signal strength where you have to do all sorts of magic to get any sort of signal at all.

LightSquared was issued a provisional license to use terrestrial transmitters on those frequencies on the condition that their signals would not interfere with GPS. Their signals did interfere with GPS, therefore they cannot use that spectrum with terrestrial transmitters. Simple as that.

Re:Just pay for proper spectrum already!

[jeffb (2.718)]

You seem to have a limited understanding of weather prediction. Given the limitations of our current weather models, it's difficult to generate a forecast for t + 24 hours when you don't receive observational data until t + 168 hours (if ever, as the previous post mentioned).

Re:Just pay for proper spectrum already!

[Aqualung812]

if the DoD is sitting on a class A and only using a couple of thousand addresses you could redistribute all of their unused ones and not change a single thing about how they work

So, you already know for a fact that they're not using a couple of thousand address spread across their entire /8? What if they're using 7.1.1.1, 7.2.1.1, etc? That would only be 256 addresses, but would be a non-trivial change to their internal routing.

Get over it & deploy IPv6. I'm sick of hearing ANY defense of the idea of re-allocating /8's.

Re:Just pay for proper spectrum already!

[petermgreen]

Lets consider a few facts about RF transmission.

1: achievable data rate is pretty much directly tied to the signal to noise ratio and the ammount of bandwidth you have available. Since there is a limit to how low you can reasonably get the noise to get a higher SNR you either have to increase the effective radiated power of your transmitter or increase the directionality of your receive antenna.
2: RF signal level drops off considerablly with distance. The free space model gives inverse square, the plane earth model gives inverse fourth power. Afaict reality for satellite transmissions is pretty close to free space and reality for terrestrial transmissions is somewhere in between free space and plane earth.
3: RF signal gets much worse if you don't have line of sight to the transmitter.

Fact 1 applies to both terrestrial and sattelite communications and presumablly a power level was found that would not interfere with GPS will delivering acceptable data rates. Fact 2 is far worse for terrestrial communications than satellite communications because with sattelite communications every user and potential victim is at roughly equal distance from the transmitter while with terrestrial some potential victims may be much closer than some users. Fact 3 is also worse for terrestrial because you are far more likely to have line of sight to the sky than you are to have line of sight to a terrestrial transmitter.

Re:Just pay for proper spectrum already!

[Anonymous Coward]

Spectrum should never be sold, just rented or leased for fixed terms.

Re:Just pay for proper spectrum already!

[thrich81]

Forbes -- there's a an unbiased source for you. Think about it -- a rich, connected guy figures out a scheme to get even richer by polluting a resource used by everyone else (the GPS assigned radio band) -- that's pretty much the business model of all of Forbes's target audience. And as far as LightSquared's $3-4B investment, they could have saved it all by asking some real engineers and physicists if they could pull this off. It's not the FCC's fault if all they listened to was bullshit artists who told them what they wanted to hear. Even if they thought they could roll over us regular, civil GPS users, they must have known that they were going to run up against the military and and aviation GPS users. It's not the FCC's job to save themselves from their own greed and stupidity. Screw them, they made a bad investment, lost it and hopefully won't come back.

Re:Just pay for proper spectrum already!

[deadweight]

As a commercial pilot, I can tell you the balloons are VERY much in use and valuable right now. There is no "lessening" going on!

Re:Just pay for proper spectrum already!

[deadweight]

Leesburg Radio, this is N123 on 122.6 MHz. What is the temperature and wind direction at 18,000 feet over DCA? N123 this is Leesburg Radio. We have no clue. We launched a balloon this morning and we think it landed near Ocean City. Can you go help look for it?

Re:Just pay for proper spectrum already!

[gstrickler]

Ummm, that's how it works now. Spectrum is never sold, only allocated for a given timeframe while it's "in the public interest".

Re:Just pay for proper spectrum already!

[Qzukk]

What frequency are you going to talk to the drones on?

Re:Just pay for proper spectrum already!

[poofmeisterp]

...Look, LightSquared. You should've just paid for actual spectrum you could use before. You acted like a cheap bastard and tried to use the wrong parts because it was cheaper, and then you cried when it didn't work.

Amen to that.

I'll add to that:

Hey, LightSquared... It's a piece-by-piece fail. You should know what works for companies that don't have shit to offer and whose ideas have been blocked from actual implementation.. SUE! :D

Copyrights, trademarks, anything. Try to squeeze whatever you can from other corporations who have used the ideas "[you] came up with in your sleep before they did."

Re:Just pay for proper spectrum already!

[hairyfeet]

Then DOUBLE the amount you pay for broadband and I'M sick of hearing anybody bitch about the costs. Sounds fair? Because thanks to the lowballing of the entire IT industry for the past decade there are not enough trained techs to do the jobs that switching to a national IPV6 would require. Hell call ANY regional carrier and ask about their IPV6 rollout plans, hell ask the larger ones like AT&T, Time Warner, Cox, what you'll get is a bunch of blank stares because they do not have the people and thus have not even BEGUN to plan.

Whether you like them or not here are some facts, 1.-The industry simply doesn't have enough trained techs with IPV6 knowledge and experience, the old guys are all retiring rather than keep getting shitty pay and long hours and the young guys have almost no experience or real knowledge because the corps won't pay the salaries required for their education and training. 2.-If the corps have to pay for the above education and training they will pass the costs onto you because heaven forbid they should actually lower profits by a single cent, why what would Wall Street think? 3.-If you were to try to switch WITHOUT the people qualified to diagnose and fix the problems that WILL arise you are gonna have a national clusterfuck, and that clusterfuck is gonna cost BILLIONS. Imagine banking sites not working, shopping sites not working, pretty much anything that isn't the government not working or working poorly.

This of course isn't counting the hundreds of millions of dollars required to replace virtually every home router and modem in the entire USA, which will ALL be heading to the landfills because they simply don't have the power in either CPU nor memory to support a quadrupling of the address space, this includes virtually all routers being sold at retail and online at this very moment (go to NewEgg and Tiger and look for yourself, nearly all being sold are NOT IPV6 capable even now and these companies will NOT be even attempting to update them, they'll just roll out new ones) and of course we don't have the manpower to go out and set up those tens of millions of IPV6 routers so pretty much all net other than smartphones will be broken. Finally you have a HUGE SECURITY PROBLEM in that most security software has NOT been tested with IPV6 and IPV6 itself is in its infancy with regards to security. Look up "IPV6 Malware" and see for yourself how the blackhats are ALREADY taking advantage of this and with a lack of software and personnel to support the changeover it'll be a malware writer's paradise.

So I'm sorry friend but you are living on fantasy island, where you can flip a switch and this will actually work...it won't. Huge chunks WILL break, tons of hardware WILL have to be thrown out which when you have a dead economy and people struggling telling them they are gonna have to buy Apple airports because nobody else is really supporting IPV6 is just bullshit, and your ISPs simply don't have people with the skills required to fix anything in a timely manner if things go wrong which they WILL go wrong, we have seen time and time again that you don't do major rollouts without serious issues popping up.

Re:Just pay for proper spectrum already!

[Aqualung812]

Then DOUBLE the amount you pay for broadband and I'M sick of hearing anybody bitch about the costs.

Done that. I'm on Comcast Business Class for my home. It isn't like this is the cheapest option, but they actually have techs that I can call and SOME of them can help me.

Hell call ANY regional carrier and ask about their IPV6 rollout plans

Comcast, evil though they may be, has one, and I'm on IPv6 now

The industry simply doesn't have enough trained techs with IPV6 knowledge and experience

We agree. This won't change until we see more adoption of it by ISPs. The techs need to start using it at home so they can use it at work.

I could go on, but my main point is that re-allocating the /8's only slightly delays the inevitable, so the idea of that needs to die. Ford isn't going to give its range back, and neither is the DoD or many of the others.

That was my main point, and the rest of this is us getting angry about other things, even those we might agree on.

Re:Just pay for proper spectrum already!

[Man On Pink Corner]

Why can't Lightsquared build towers that operate at power levels comparable to GPS signals?

To answer your question, it's because GPS signals arrive at roughly the intensity of a 40-watt light bulb, observed at the distance between the United States coasts.

GPS receivers demonstrate that it's possible for a handheld device to receive GPS reasonably well, below the noise floor or not (and nearly every smartphone does, already), so why must these hypothetical towers operate at such radically higher power levels?

Briefly, it has to do with the bandwidth requirements. GPS uses exotic signal processing techniques that are only useful when the amount of information to be transmitted is very small relative to the bandwidth being occupied.

LTE is exactly the opposite. For broadband Internet, you need to squeeze a large amount of information into a relatively narrow channel. That requires large amounts of power. (In engineering terms, if you wanted to kill an afternoon or two coming up to speed, you could do a search on the Shannon channel capacity equation.)

Re:Just pay for proper spectrum already!

[bws111]

Your ham analogy is apt, yet you completely miss the point.

If you design a receiver using all the information that is known, you can't be faulted for having a 'cheap/poorly designed/non-conforming' device. In the TV/ham case, that would mean that the TV is designed knowing that the amateur bands are there, and the power levels that may be used in those bands. If you don't design your device to reject those frequencies at those power levels, you have made a poor device. In that case, you will indeed be told to fix your TV, and the ham operator is free to continue operating. HOWEVER, if the ham ups his power level beyond what is allowed, and it interferes with your TV, that is NOT the fault of the TV, it is the fault of the amateur operator, and he is the one who will be told to stop operating.

In the GPS case, the GPS receivers were designed (properly) using the available information. Namely, that the adjacent bands would be used only for low power satellite-to-earth transmissions. If they fail under those conditions, fault the device. HOWEVER, if they fail because someone decides to use those bands in a relatively high-power application, and the GPS devices fail, that is clearly NOT the fault of the device.

And I have no idea what you mean by 'non-conforming'. Non-conforming to what?

Re:Just pay for proper spectrum already!

[Forever Wondering]

Forbes -- there's a an unbiased source for you.

The article seems to be well balanced and heaped its share of criticism on LS and Falcone in particular [the SEC investigation].

Think about it -- a rich, connected guy figures out a scheme

The article implies he bought/strong armed his way into society--which hardly makes him connected.

to get even richer by

Considering that LS would have been able to provide data plans that were 8X cheaper than conventional wireless, we would all have gotten richer [by being charged less].

polluting a resource used by everyone else (the GPS assigned radio band)

LS would not have polluted the GPS band itself. It was only because inexpensive GPS manufacturers were relying on receiving signals outside their assigned frequency band. From the article:

To pick up such faint signals, the GPS industry designed receivers that take in a broad swath of radio waves on either side, like an owl’s huge eyes that can see a single photon in the darkness of night. Instead of zeroing in on the GPS frequencies alone, they take in the entire GPS band plus Falcone’s neighboring block. That allowed for cheap, handheld GPS devices. But it was based on the assumption no one would ever build on the lot next door.

It appears that GPS makers did something even more egregious: they are sending additional information [additional beyond the WAAS correction data--which is transmitted inside the GPS band] on a side channel outside the assigned GPS band that they're not licensed for [and comes down in LS's block]. Again, from the article:

High-accuracy GPS devices like Deere’s need GPS signals plus a narrow data stream that comes down in Falcone’s block. That data stream is supposed to be moved, but few of the $15,000 devices have receivers that can be retuned to pick up the signal on another part of the spectrum. “When I look at the design now, I say, ‘How ignorant we all were,’” says Javad Ashjaee, a pioneering GPS engineer who now wants to sell filters to fix the problem.

If it were merely interference, adding a bandpass filter to the GPS receiver would be all that was required. But, this says that the ancillary data stream would have to be moved to another part of the spectrum. This seems pretty damning [to the GPS manufacturers] to me. If true, it's akin to a TV station transmitting its standard def signal on channel 4 [the GPS band], saying that it needs to put the HD extra data on channel 3 [the extra precision GPS data]. They were doing so only because no other TV station was assigned channel 3 at the time.

that's pretty much the business model of all of Forbes's target audience.

In general, I'm no fan of Forbes. But, again, I reiterate that the article was well balanced. From your comment, I'm surmising [perhaps incorrectly] that you've still not read the article yet.

And as far as LightSquared's $3-4B investment, they could have saved it all by asking some real engineers and physicists if they could pull this off.

They most certainly did. If you doubt that, download and read the PDF of LS's regulatory filing with the FCC, linked in the article. The only reason that LS's idea was a bad one was that existing GPS receivers were "cheating" in order to be inexpensive.

It's not the FCC's fault if all they listened to was bullshit artists who told them what they wanted to hear.

The FCC has culpability because of the approvals it gave LS during the entire process. For example, they granted them a license to build an unlimited number of [15KW] ground stations.

Even if they thought they could roll over us regular, civil GPS users, they must have known that they were going to

Re:Just pay for proper spectrum already!

[DarthBart]

LOL, budget owned. A Global Hawk costs $104 million. $104 million * 122 WFOs = $12.6 billion dollars. Somehow I think they'll stick with cheap radiosondes twice a day.
 

Re:Just pay for proper spectrum already!

[hairyfeet]

I think we agree but see different ways of fixing the problem. you think the ISPs should just start rolling it out which will give more people training, I don't think it will because they'll be too busy screening the calls from pissed off customers with broken connections. I think the /8s should be re-allocated but THEN the government should put timetables with SEVERE penalties upon the ISPs, block ALL sales of equipment that isn't IPV6 ready, and maybe even have an incentive program like we did where people got low cost converters when the analog TV went, only if you showed your ISP bill you could get a lowered cost router that was IPV6 capable in return for you handing in your old units for recycling. Finally incentives to get students into IT and specifically networking, perhaps letting them get their degrees for little to no cost, because with all the lowballing and H1-Bs we've just about killed any incentive to go into networking and we just don't have the manpower we need.

We BOTH agree that its gonna have to happen, I simply think letting the ISPs handle it will be a clusterfuck as they are more concerned about their quarterly stock earnings than the national infrastructure. traditionally infrastructure has been handled by the government and if there was ever a time when they needed to put their foot down and set an end date NOW would be the time, but its still gonna take time and that is what reallocating all those currently wasted /8s would do, let us have a couple of years while the clock runs down and people and equipment are put into place for the final pulling of the switch.

Because I can tell you myself and a lot of the greybeards have already decided we aren't gonna deal with IPV6, in my area nobody offers it and by the time they roll it out I'd have to cram like mad and just trial and error the damned thing, and with the malware guys sitting on the sidelines like jackals with bibs on just waiting to fuck every system that isn't set up perfectly its gonna be a mess that i just don't want to deal with.

Re:Just pay for proper spectrum already!

[Forever Wondering]

Your ham analogy is apt, yet you completely miss the point.

I was a ham at one point ... BTW, I did another reply that has additional info/talking points. It might be worth a look (http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3154397&cid=41519923) because I'll try not to repeat too much of it here, but much of what I say will assume you're familar with it. However, I've dug up some additional detail/info that I'll add here.

If you design a receiver using all the information that is known, you can't be faulted for having a 'cheap/poorly designed/non-conforming' device.

Although many webpages cite just two frequencies (the one of import here is 1575.xxxx Mhz), GPS actually has five different bands L1-L5. The GPS band in question/contention is the L1 band and is allocated 1559-1610 Mhz. LightSquared's spectrum is 1525-1559 Mhz, which I'll call the "LS band". But, Garmin/Trimble [and other low cost receivers] don't just listen to GPS L1. They also deliberately listen to spectrum on both sides of L1 (which included LS). If they had designed their receivers correctly, they would only listen to L1 [and have a bandpass filter for it]. It's even worse in the John Deere Starfire GPS system, which I'll get to below.

In the TV/ham case, that would mean that the TV is designed knowing that the amateur bands are there, and the power levels that may be used in those bands. If you don't design your device to reject those frequencies at those power levels, you have made a poor device. In that case, you will indeed be told to fix your TV, and the ham operator is free to continue operating.

A quick note here: The TV set getting interference from a legal ham signal (at 30 Mhz) is usually caused by the TV's "intermediate frequency" stage amplifier/downmixer (which just happens to also operate at 30 Mhz, regardless of what channel it's trying to receive which could be above 50 Mhz). The IF stage needs to be shielded to prevent this.

HOWEVER, if the ham ups his power level beyond what is allowed, and it interferes with your TV, that is NOT the fault of the TV, it is the fault of the amateur operator, and he is the one who will be told to stop operating.

Ham transmissions are generally limited to 1000 watts, but front end overload of a [poorly designed] TV set can [easily] happen if the ham signal is only 10 watts. In this instance, power level really doesn't matter.

In the GPS case, the GPS receivers were designed (properly) using the available information. Namely, that the adjacent bands would be used only for low power satellite-to-earth transmissions. If they fail under those conditions, fault the device. HOWEVER, if they fail because someone decides to use those bands in a relatively high-power application, and the GPS devices fail, that is clearly NOT the fault of the device.

This was a shortcut that Garmin/Trimble took. There was nothing that said the FCC couldn't reclassify non-L1 at any time. The TV analogy is a TV set that wants to listen to channel 4 has to listen to channels 3-5 and only works if no other station is transmitting on channel 3 or 5. It's a misdesign. It was probably seen by Garmin et. al. as a clever way to produce an inexpensive receiver at the time (or they just wanted to get to market quickly and doing it right might have added a year's design time). But, surely they had to know about the vulnerability when designing it [and definitely did in 2001] and chose to gamble rather than design a better quality receiver with a proper bandpass filter. So, even though they knew about the problem for 10+ years, subsequently, they didn't even try to improve their design [based on tech now available that wasn't available then]?

And I have no idea what you mean by 'non-conforming'. Non-conforming to what?

Non-conforming means going outside of your assigned/l

Nice choice of spectrum

[vmxeo]

I suspect the request to "share" frequencies with weather balloon transmitters has less to do with available bandwidth and more to do with a relative lack of industry who will be able to stand up this time to object. Weather balloons typically transmit at less than 300 milliwatts. If they couldn't figure out how to keep their land based-transmitters from overpowering 50 watt gps signals, I don't see how high-altitude balloons signals will fare any better.

Re:Nice choice of spectrum

[Anonymous Coward]

It's just a trial balloon.

Re:Nice choice of spectrum

[ColdWetDog]

I would agree that the Weather Balloon Fraternity is less economically and politically advantaged as the GPS community, but ground based radio balloon stations could be upgraded with better antennas / receivers and it might well be a better fit than trying to upgrade millions on tiny little GPS receivers stuck in everyone and everything.

Again, it would be important not to take Lightsquared's take on this without some due diligence. They haven't shown much of a grasp of radio frequency physics in the past.

Re:Nice choice of spectrum

[msauve]

All else being equal, RF signals diminish at the square of the distance. GPS satellites orbit at ~20,000 km. A weather balloon might get to 50 km, max. So 400x. 400^2=160000. GPS probably uses directional antennae (no sense broadcasting outwards), so maybe a bit less. Even with that, the signals from weather balloons can be expected to be very much stronger than that from GPS. Plus, the reason Lightsquared's original plan would never work is that it used frequencies immediately adjacent to GOS frequencies. That issue is avoided by using a different frequency, one not adjacent to satellite frequencies.

Still, Lightsquared should be denied - they acquired satellite frequencies cheaply, because of the known limitations. They then wanted to repurpose them for terrestrial use, vastly increasing their value. But, it was proven that couldn't work without interfering with other satellite usage (GPS). The government doesn't owe them anything - they can still use those frequencies for satellites, which is exactly what they paid for. Because they couldn't get much more value than they paid for, they're now asking for a "freebie." They have an exaggerated sense of entitlement. Screw them.

Re:Nice choice of spectrum

[queazocotal]

Several reasons it's better.
Firstly, weather balloons are a _LOT_ closer to the transmitter than GPS.
300mW@100km is a much, much stronger signal than 50W at 40000km.

Secondly, there are perhaps a few dozen stations that receive weather balloons, and these can be upgraded for well under a few thousand dollars each.
It's not like GPS, where there are literally millions of receivers that may be affected.

Re:Nice choice of spectrum

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

At this point, it's hard to tell whether Lightsquared had some real optimists on their tech team, or whether they understand the value of correctly formatted political whining.

Re:Nice choice of spectrum

[Kryptonian Jor-El]

And who is going to have to pay for this upgrade? Lightsquared was shady with their last dealings with the FCC, I wouldn't expect them to be honest this time around.

Re:Nice choice of spectrum

[Anonymous Coward]

But why should they have to upgrade their equipment just to convenience LightSquared who has proven to be a bunch of con men and bozos.

Re:Nice choice of spectrum

[Anonymous Coward]

I think weather balloons and GPS are about the same distance to the transmitter -- effectively 0...

Re:Nice choice of spectrum

[Anonymous Coward]

Several reasons it's better.
Firstly, weather balloons are a _LOT_ closer to the transmitter than GPS.
300mW@100km is a much, much stronger signal than 50W at 40000km.

GPS is a ~12-hour orbit, not geosynchronous, dumbass.

Re:Nice choice of spectrum

[GoogleShill]

Most people don't realize how miniscule a GPS signal is by the time it reaches the ground. It is far below the noise floor and the receivers require a DSP chip to perform DSSM to pick out the actual signal. Having a high-power, possibly drifting signal that close will definitely cause problems.

Re:Nice choice of spectrum

[poofmeisterp]

At this point, it's hard to tell whether Lightsquared had some real optimists on their tech team, or whether they understand the value of correctly formatted political whining.

Franklins and Clevelands? :)

Defining LTE would have been useful

[wonkey_monkey]

LTE (telecommunication), Long Term Evolution, a telephony and mobile broadband communication standard

Get your own spectrum fuckers.

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, why the fuck does all of their plans involve using SOMEONE ELSES BANDWIDTH?

Re:Get your own spectrum fuckers.

[osu-neko]

Seriously, why the fuck does all of their plans involve using SOMEONE ELSES BANDWIDTH?

Because the FCC told them they can't use their own. If you're going to deny them the use of the spectrum they own and paid a couple billion for, I would think it would be reasonable to help them with obtaining an alternative.

Re:Get your own spectrum fuckers.

[Todd Knarr]

Actually the FCC told them they can use their own spectrum, if they comply with the conditions they agreed to when they bought it. LS's problem is that they don't want to comply with those conditions. It looks to me like they knew they couldn't make their network fly with the original conditions in place, but they went ahead and bought the spectrum anyway betting that once they had it they could weasel out of complying with the conditions by boo-hooing about consumers. The FCC didn't buy it. I've little sympathy for LS, they should've just said up front "We can't make this work under those restrictions." and not bought the spectrum. Then they wouldn't have this problem.

Re:Get your own spectrum fuckers.

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Seriously, why the fuck does all of their plans involve using SOMEONE ELSES BANDWIDTH?

Because the FCC told them they can't use their own. If you're going to deny them the use of the spectrum they own and paid a couple billion for, I would think it would be reasonable to help them with obtaining an alternative.

They bought satellite to ground spectrum. They can do all the satellite-to-ground their little hearts desire. They just can't set up a bunch of vastly more powerful ground stations and transmit from those.

In other news, my '120db death metal at 3am' plan does not seem to enjoy robust 1st amendment protections...

Re:Get your own spectrum fuckers.

[MightyMartian]

The FCC told them they could use it if it did not interfere. Everyone who understood radio knew it was going to interfere, but LS insisted on going ahead. Don't blame the FCC or GPS for LS's arrogance and stupidity.

Kinda hope they succeed.

[jacks smirking reven]

As mis-planned as LightSquared's business plans seem, I do really hope they or someone with a similar idea succeeds soon. Competitors obtaining and lighting up spectrum for data seems like one of the few market based actions needed to really put a bit of pressure on Verizon/ATT and even local broadband providers. That combined with some hopeful new ideas for the FCC on how it doles out spectrum and we could see some increased capability in US broadband options.

Again

[sjames]

Here is yet another hair brained scheme to use a public resource on the cheap for private profit. Who needs accurate weather forecasts and severe storm warnings when we could let yet another carrier overcharge us for wireless bandwidth?

Re:Again

[Anonymous Coward]

hare-brained - nothing to do with your barnet.

Re:Again

[sjames]

Both have been in use since the 16th century.

Re:Again

[Anonymous Coward]

In use for a subset of people who used "hair" to spell the rabbity thing.

Re:Again

[sjames]

Idiom changes. Get over it.

Re:Again

[Anonymous Coward]

Idiom hasn't changed. People are just too lazy to think through the idiom to figure out why one is right and the other is wrong. Hint: only one of them has a brain.

Re:Again

[sjames]

And the other would seriously disrupt the thought process if it grew in the wrong direction.

Great

[SuperMooCow]

Another cloud computing business model.

Pythonesque

[Anonymous Coward]

Not sure if they're the Black Knight or the "I'm not dead yet" character.

Re:Pythonesque

[Anonymous Coward]

It's the "I'm not dead yet" guy. They haven't yet threatened to bite off any legs. And the FCC already said "You're not fooling anyone."

The Producers

[bmo]

> has a new plan: to use some of the spectrum currently reserved by the federal government for uses like weather-balloon communications.

BECAUSE NOBODY EVER USES THOSE FREQUENCIES FOR ANYTHING USEFUL RIGHT GUISE?

The amount of stupid in this company just really makes me wonder if I should just start my own scam and get away with it for years while burning up investor money in impossible persuits designed to fail.

It's like The Producers. Heaven forbid they actually do something useful and have to pay back their investors by building a useful network

--
BMO

Met Aids Spectrum Issues

[westlake]

The Powerpoint presentation:

Meteorological Aids Spectrum Issues

It comes down to this:

Radiosonde transmitters operate in a hostile environment, with strict limits on weight, power and so on.

Most will never be recovered or reused.

Keep it simple.

Keep it affordable.

This news just in...

[Dogtanian]

Pissed-off weather balloon attacks CEO of LightSquared.

2.4GHz

[k6mfw]

going OT, someone said reason why so many Part 15 unlicensed devices on 2.4GHz (i.e. wifi, baby monitors) is way back when various services were carving up the spectrum (TV, music, amateur, marine, business, police, military, aeronautical, etc.) but there were certain frequencies FCC designated as ISM (industrial, scientific, and medical) where companies want to use RF for materials process, cook food, or certain medical applications. These are chunks of spectrum that has no modulation and/or callsign ID. So everyone's happy until all these innovators in Silicon Valley come along and develop various wireless systems of all kinds of stuff but spectrum is full. "Whaddaya mean we're late for the party and there ain't no spectrum left?" So they put all there stuff on 2.4GHz.

Re:2.4GHz

[hpa]

Well, part of the reason it is all there (and other ISM bands like 915 MHz and 5.8 GHz) is because the stuff *can* work with interference. This property is useful both when dealing with other "intentional radiators" and with industrial emissions, so it makes sense to put them in the same area. Pretty much the FCC and other regulatory agencies put an (almost) free-for-all sign up and said "if you can make it work, go for it, just don't complain if it doesn't work at all." However, you wouldn't be able to use the ISM bands -- or, quite frankly, any frequency close to them -- for weak-signal work like satellite. It would be like trying to whisper at Woodstock.

Re:2.4GHz

[Anonymous Coward]

OBTW, take a good long look at Part 15, and then at Part 2, then at Part 97, if your context is purely USA-centric.

The 2.4GHz spectrum you're discussing is allocated to the Amateur Radio Service on a secondary basis to the
Government Radiolocation Service, which means amateurs must endure any interference from government radars
and must NOT interfere with government radars. Part 15 devices must not cause interference to either Amateur
Radio Service users NOR government radars and must endure interference from either or both and must share that
slice of the spectrum with other Part 15 users.

A few years ago, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts tried to get United Airlines in trouble because MassPort wanted
to charge a fee to use their WiFi system sprinkled around Logan Airport, and United had installed free WiFi in its
frequent flyer lounge. The FCC thoroughly spanked Massport for filing the complaint in the first place (can't their lawyers
frickin' read, for Pete's sake?) and for failing to share the band with United (and the other users, including other airlines).
Massport claimed to have priority since it was a state government agency. Bzzzzt.... wrong again, Boston...

Certain ISM devices at 915MHz actually have priority over Amateur use of the 902-928MHz band. The rules for the 5.8GHz
band varies somewhat - Amateurs have 5650-5925, but again, the Government Radiolocation Service has ultimate priority.
Licensed stations, including Amateur, generally always have priority over non-government unlicensed services (i.e., Part 15 users).

One of these days, I'm going to set up a nice, wide, loud digital link on 2.4GHz. and see what kind of DX I can work. It'll be fun...

I tak it you don't

[publiclurker]

spend much time in the country. Recovering these tings in any reasonable amount of time is not always practical.

Re:I tak it you don't

[DarthBart]

You're assuming that you can even recover them. The balloons launched from NWS offices near the coast end up in the drink 99% of the time. When I was touring their office, one of the meteorologists at NWS Tampa said in his service years, he's heard of 2, maybe 3, of the radiosondes being launched from their office be recovered.

This doesn't have to be a bad thing

[rabtech]

This doesn't have to be an adversarial process or a bad thing.

If I were in charge, I'd tell Lightsquared "sure, no problem... as long as you supply suitable communication equipment and free bandwidth to anyone affected", where suitable is a low-power modem capable of running for X hours on Y mHA of battery power, and operating between V-Z temperature range.

If they want to give NOAA, Universities, and anyone else involved in using weather balloons free low-power LTE modems and some reasonable bandwidth, why not? You could go even further and make them provide a geosync satellite uplink to make sure they have nationwide coverage for weather balloons just in case they are out of range of ground-based towers.

It would certainly be a more efficient use of the spectrum compared to 400bps transmitters that have to be isolated by frequency from each other. You could launch 1,000 weather balloons in the same area without any interference issues... something not possible with the current system.

Re:This doesn't have to be a bad thing

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm rather doubtful that this LTE modem will be of any use at 50km up there in the clouds.

Lightsquare's moral obligation

[davidwr]

If this is a go, Lightsquared is morally obligated to allow the license it bought previously to be combined with this new spectrum and "re-auctioned," contingent that it get a full refund with interest and some reasonable costs it has already incurred if it loses the new auction.

Why?

Because other bidders placed their bids based on the usefulness of that spectrum at the time, knowing that GPS was already in use and that other slices, including the weather-balloon slice(s), were already allocated.

If Lightsquared pressures the government into changing the rules of the game, everyone deserves a do-over.

Morally speaking.

Is Lightsquared going to go along with this if they can avoid it and still make their spectrum usable for LTE? I very much doubt it.

Re:Lightsquare's moral obligation

[Anonymous Coward]

If this is a go, Lightsquared is morally obligated to allow the license it bought previously to be combined with this new spectrum and "re-auctioned," contingent that it get a full refund with interest and some reasonable costs it has already incurred if it loses the new auction.

Why?

Because other bidders placed their bids based on the usefulness of that spectrum at the time, knowing that GPS was already in use and that other slices, including the weather-balloon slice(s), were already allocated.

<PHB>And why should those people, with their shortsighted, by-the-book thinking, profit off lightsquared's outside-the-box creativity and regulatory innovation?</PHB>

MORONS

[Anonymous Coward]

DO these guys actually have any RF engineers on Staff or Just Fucking Lawyers !?

Re:MORONS

[HornWumpus]

Fired all their techs. All that's left is suits and lawyers.

Re:MORONS

[poofmeisterp]

Fired all their techs. All that's left is suits and lawyers.

"Suits and lawyers."

I love the ring of that.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

This is just a symptom of the Steve Jobs disease..

[tiqui]

Unfortunately, most average citizens have no understanding of wireless technology, so when a guy like Steve Jobs came along and offered them a consumer gadget that requires loads of bandwidth they buy it by the millions. Now they, and the politicians they elect, and vendors who seek some of their money are locked in a battle for unlimited quantities of something that is limited... bandwidth within the RF spectrum.

The hard truth is that there is a limit to the available spectrum, and that limited resource should only be allocated to uses that can only be performed wireless. It borders on the criminal to have smartphone companies building video and web browsing into phones... individuals filling their vacant cranial cavities with individual streams of Youtube cat videos, Justin Bieber music, and other individualized streams of pablum should not be competing for use of the nation's RF spectrum with satellite communications, GPS signals, firefighters, police, air traffic controllers, national security, TV and Radio broadcasters (who each serve millions with their broadcast pablum) and so on. Broadcast signals (like GPS, radio, and TV) should have priority since they each serve an unlimited number of people with their bit of the spectrum. Signals that only serve a single civilian user should be the absolute lowest-priority in the system.

Want to make a phone call from your home to your office? Use a land line.

Want to make a call from your car? Cell phone is fine... it's the only way to solve the problem

Want your laptop to talk to a printer? Plug in a cable (network, USB, etc)

Want a security camera? Run a wire

Want you pilot to talk to the control tower? That requires wireless

Want to know where you are while hiking, boating, flying or driving? GPS is great, it uses little bandwidth and serves millions of people, and cannot be done with wires.

With hard-wired networks, there is no limit to the bandwidth... you can just pull more cables when and where needed and your use of bandwidth has no impact upon your neighbor's use of bandwidth (he can pull all the cables he wants on his property). With wireless, on the other hand, each user is consuming a slice of a national asset which he/she does not individually own. There is no way to increase the available RF spectrum... if you want more for something then something else must get by with less. Additionally, most people do not understand that some frequencies of RF energy work better for short-range communication and others for long-range... and some frequencies can be used with small-and-cheap electronics while other frequencies require bigger and more expensive circuits (although this latter limit changes over time of course as technology advances).

Unfortunately, as long as carnival barkers like Steve Jobs keep offering consumers new shiny baubles that need more bandwidth, there will be other jerks like Lightsquared who will try to make a buck by promising consumers more of the RF spectrum (and gambling that public pressure from the uninformed masses for more will force the government to allocate more) for stupid shiny objects at the expense of vital things like navigation, public safety, national security, etc.

Re:This is just a symptom of the Steve Jobs diseas

[Anonymous Coward]

I dont think you quite understand RF either, not all frequencies for example can be used for ATC>Pilot communications. Why not use them for more localized uses?(Wireless computing, bluetooth etc).

Re:This is just a symptom of the Steve Jobs diseas

[Lluc]

Wow, a Luddite on Slashdot gets modded up...

Luckily we have many systems in place for managing scarce resources. In fact, almost any resource you deal with throughout life is scarce. I'm not saying we manage wireless frequencies efficiently, but I'm quit sure that "navigation, public safety, national security, etc" have been improved by smartphones rather than suffering due to smartphones taking their bandwidth.

Re:This is just a symptom of the Steve Jobs diseas

[Anonymous Coward]

You absolutely nailed it! It makes me cringe everytime I hear carriers advertising streaming HD video. Cellular service and mobile data is a wonderful thing but must be viewed in light of the limited spectrum resources. Frequency re-use and spread spectrum technologies are what allow carriers to offer so much bandwidth in a limited spectrum. They can give users more bandwidth by either increasing spectrum usage or decreasing the size of the 'cells' and adding more towers. Therefore if they're going to push ridiculous uses of a scarce resource, by no means should they be given more of it - make them put up more towers which will raise the prices and eventually bring the insatiable demand for mobile data into equilibrium with reality.

I think LS is underestimating weather balloons

[ffflala]

According to the official chart, it looks like weather balloons probably make much greater use of the spectrum than LS is willing to admit: http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/8b51a211569e.jpg

Maybe they should look into the swamp gas spectrum.

Funny...

[poofmeisterp]

Wouldn't it be hilarious if they gave those who lease the spectrum to them free service, with which usage will ultimately use a large chunk of the available bandwidth (active data use), which will let the end amount of bandwidth be somewhat similar to that of the large service providers today?

"New, fast, 20mbps data* available.
* Mileage may vary. Real-time bandwidth tests show end speed at roughly 1-2mbps."

Just food for thought :)

Re:This is just a symptom of the Steve Jobs diseas

[poofmeisterp]

... individuals filling their vacant cranial cavities with individual streams of Youtube cat videos, Justin Bieber vomiting, and other individualized streams of pablum should not be competing for use of the nation's RF spectrum...

I did a quick correct on that line for ya.

Re:This is just a symptom of the Steve Jobs diseas

[RevDisk]

"There is no way to increase the available RF spectrum."

No, but it's trivial to increase the available bandwidth. Smaller cells. You don't increase the EM spectrum, of course. You dilute the amount of bandwidth being utilized within whatever stretch of land you wish to consider. It's the equivalent of "just run more wires!" you were ranting about.

Carve one cell into four smaller cells? You just quadrupled the potential bandwidth. Gets complicated with the antennas and cell phone software, but that's an existing and mostly solved issue. I drastically improved the mobile bandwidth by plugging in a "cell tower in a box" into my LAN (isolated like no tomorrow, I don't trust Verizon). Voila, users are happy with their cell speed again. They COULD have just used the WiFi, but why type in a password?