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FCC Proposal To Limit Access To 5725-5850 MHz Band
New submitter thittesd0375 (1111917) writes New rules adopted by the FCC will greatly limit the amount of bandwidth available in the unlicensed U-NII band used to deliver internet to rural areas. The filters required to comply with the new rules would shrink the available frequencies from 125MHz to only 45MHz. Petitions to reconsider this ruling can be submitted here and previous petitions can be found here.
According to the FCC's ruling, they did it to stop Wi-Fi signals interfering with Doppler radar systems that use the same frequencies. This doesn't sound like Big Telco or Big Cableco are behind it.
OP said:
> to deliver internet to rural areas
Article says:
> the Commission’s Enforcement Bureau found that certain models of devices certified for use in these bands were designed in a way that users were able
to disable the DFS mechanism. With the DFS mechanism inactive, the device could transmit on an active
radar channel and cause harmful interference.
and:
> Early field studies performed by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration’s (NTIA’s) Institute for Telecommunications Sciences (ITS) and FAA staff indicated the interference sources were certain unlicensed U-NII devices that operated in the same frequency band as these Federal radar systems. This interference was occurring despite the Commission’s rules that require U-NII devices operating in this band to incorporate an interference mitigation technique called dynamic frequency selection (DFS).
Oh look, people buying illegal 1Watt emitters from China and attaching them to bigass antennae to "deliver internet in rural areas" on fixed channels without DFS when regulations strictly say "nope", now crying that they're being "stepped on".
gtfo.
They're trying to protect Terminal Doppler Weather Radar, they've added restrictions on the upper band but removed the indoor restrictions on the lower (5.2ghz) band. A fair tradeoff in the opinion of someone that used to work at a WISP.
Just because you disagree doesn't mean it's not true.
Doppler radars cannot work on a satellite as the beam should be almost parallel to the earth's surface. They are used to remotely measure the wind speed and are useful in detecting rotating winds, thus tornadoes.
My father in law is in a rural community. He has hundreds of acres of land and he has to use a wireless provider for internet. But he's also got dark fiber running up to his mailbox. After the cable was laid all over the county, nothing was done with it. How about taking the opportunity to push ISPs to light up that dark fiber for rural areas. If you have telephone service you should also have broadband capability.
That may effectively put an end to all the Linux based APs (DD-WRT, Tomato, OpenWRT, etc.)
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
No, no need to rush.
They just stop the radio from being modifiable by software in such a way the violates the rules. The radio firmware for radios sold in the US just won't let you use those bands at too high of power.
Guess what, they ALREADY WORK LIKE THIS.
Your OSS router software can't make random changes to the radios currently, never has been able to as there are already laws in effect governing these issues.
Some devices allow you to get buy with more than you should, but thats generally an oversight, and easily fixed in the next hardware revision ... as already happens.
This isn't going to take away your precious, no need to get your panties in a knot.
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