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

[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

[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

[Glendale2x]

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

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!

[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!

[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.

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

[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: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.

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?

Great

[SuperMooCow]

Another cloud computing business model.

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.