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No AirPort for the French?
First Person writes "Following on the heels of the Apple 'Lethal Weapon G4' ads, the French military may prevent Apple'sAirPort wireless system from being sold in France. According to this article, the 2.4-GHz frequency is reserved for the army. Equipment broadcasting at that frequency may therefore damage or be damaged by military hardware. As wireless systems start to proliferate, these conflicts should become increasingly common." (The article's in French; perhaps utilize the Babelfish thing, eh?)
So the next time Germany decides to invade, all they need is a big pile of iBooks to totally block all communications, is that the idea?
Only when the companies can be bothered to pay for them. The most recent round of auctions had something like a 90% default rate. No one paid. They have to re-auction the frequencies. There are also apparently no penalties for defaulting on a bid. Anyone want to bid every frequency back into the stratosphere?
I don't know much about wireless communications. I'm just wondering, with an advertised range of 50 meters (according to the article), how likely would these things be to cause real problems for the French military? I would presume the military devices have ranges measured in kilometers. What kind of interference would you get, a mixing of sources, or would it be more like crossing a boundary from one source to the next when you entered the range where an airport's transmission was stronger? How likely would it be that a digital system could pick out only the signal it was interested in from two sources?
Is it possible they are also worried about people using airports to intercept their communications? Sounds silly given that they'd use encryption for anything important, but who says the military doesn't worry about silly things?
If I tried to bring an iBook into France, would they arrest me, or does this only affect actual sales in France?
Also the 100 Mbit/s wireless standard (don't know if this is also 802.11) will be operating at 5 Ghz, so maybe the french will be able to use that.
Click.
Perhaps Slashdot could start posting URLs like these with another link to Babelfish to give them credit?
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The problem is that any device that uses digital logic, such as your CD player, may radiate at frequencies that interfere with communication and navigation systems. Your device may be a weak RF emitter but it is much closer to the aircraft's antenna than the transmitters the flight crew are monitoring.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
The type of modulation is irrelevant. An RF signal has a center frequency, amplitude and bandwidth. The bandwidth usually determines how many "frequencies" are available in a frequency band. For example, an AM broadcast station's signal uses about 10 kHz of bandwidth and an NTSC (USA) TV signal uses about 6 MHz of bandwidth. The number of usable frequencies may be smaller because receivers do not have perfect rejection of signals on adjacent frequencies. That is why there are gaps in the channel assignments of TV stations.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Just a note... Anything like Apple's Airport being able to damage military hardware because it runs on a certain frequency would show a severe problem with the french military altogether. If they could experience problems from these devices, then obviously its not fit for combat. Of course they're just complaining because its already reserved though...
Meaning that IBM, Intel, HP, Dell, and whatnot, with the more expensive and more powerful and more capable IEEE 802.11 implementations will have big headaches selling to the French, and perhaps other governments/countries.
Curious:Did no one consider this when IEEE 802.11 was drafted and implemented?
-AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
May be able to escape fairly easily, as it is *only* 50m range, where the other implementations are both more powerful and expensive, with up to 200ft or 300ft(I guess 100m then) ranges.
Any guesses if French Mac lovers will be able to do something about this as the iBook ships en masse?
-AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
The upshot is that it looks like most people won't/can't encrypt their data so that we can walk around with notebooks sniffing everyone else's connections. There are several companies building Internet-connected base-stations in airports charging connect-time to surf the web (I just got back from Atlanta which had one). Instead of paying them, you can have fund sniffing what everyone else is doing.
It _isn't_ just a software issue.
I've been working for a while on some wireless projects, and making a box handle more than one frequency properly can be very difficult and expensive. Chip sets are sold optimized for a specific frequency, and each band range can have such totally different characteristics that it becomes and apples-and-oranges situation. Reflections, what types of material the signal can pass through, possible bandwidth, etc... many things change, and can cause a total rethinking of how it works. The only way for Apple to handle France is a fairly thorough redesign, and a unit capable of many bandwidths would be more expensive than I want to think about.
French police is composed of the Police Nationale (ordinary police, civilian, mainly in cities and urban areas) and the Gendarmerie (military police, mainly in the country or in little towns).
You can bet that the real army wouldn't care about little flashy notebooks if they had to set up a strong communication system in a hostile country; but here we're not talking about soldiers and fighters, we're talking about policemen. Therefore the constraints are less drastic, and the systems may be less noise-tolerant. Furthermore, when the communication devices in use were created, nobody thought that UHF communication might ever be integrated into a mass-market product.
They (the gendarmerie) have thousands of offices all over the country, most of time in isolated areas (countryside, very small towns, mountains - they are the guys who will save your life if you ever get lost in a hole in the Alps). They want to have a working communication system and they don't want to dump all their communication devices jus because of a few notebooks.
I don't think there will be a real problem, though : 50-meters range is not significant in regard to the distances covered by their networks. But if there is a clash, and the choice is between iBooks and the Gendarmes, by money is on the latter.
Thomas
I can tell you this: we chose that frequency specifically to piss off the French.
I wonder if it's time for the FCC to relinquish control of the broadcast spectrum to the UN or some other similar international agency?
American sovereignty was decreed by GOD and by NO OTHER. It is not within your authority, nor that of the traitorous United States "Government" infesting Washington, to abrogate American sovereignty by subordinating it to illegal international treaties which are designed to put the United States military DIRECTLY under the control of GENERAL BOUTROS BOUTROS GALI.
The FCC is an AMERICAN agency, and AMERICANS own the American airwaves! FOREVER. Amen.
May God grant Victory to our Cause.
I can't believe that Apple didn't know this, that can't be true. I used to be in touch with their spectrum-management person, though he might have left there by now. Certainly they are cognizant of the basics of radio regulation.
Besides AirPort, you can't operate CB, Family Radio service (the little 1/2 watt walkie-talkies that have recently become popular) and Transient Radio Service (the color dot system walkie-talkies) in other countries, in general. Some countries don't want you to operate your Inmarsat or other satellite telephone, though this is more rare. In some countries you might be able to license them, but you don't just cross a border and get on the radio without checking first, lest you get a rude visit from the military including equipment confiscation or even inprisonment as a spy in some places - no kidding. Hams have worked out an international license, but they must comply with each country's frequency and power limitations while they are there.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
from ARRL, the amateur radio organizaion:
-=Maggie Leber=-
Second, AM or FM is really a dramatic simplification of the way you modulate signals. You are right in thinking that restricting yourself to a single modulation method of either AM or FM dramatically reduces your bandwidth, but you don't think of modulating both amplitude and frequency together; you instead drop the entire concept and modulate the entire wave form. For example, phase-shift-keying (PSK) is a popular modulation technique: think of the sin wave, then abruptly shift it forward 1/4 of a wave (i.e. 90 degrees). You can make some mathematical equation showing the equivalence with simultaneously modulating both amplitude an frequency, but the other mathematics are easier.
Found some more info on IEEE 802.11 and, specifically, Apple's Airport.
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Am I the only one who thinks Microsoft is a misnomer? Perhaps Macrosoft would be a better fit?
The interesting bit is that this doesn't affect just Apple or even just the iBook--the new desktop G4s can also take the AirPort card. (Makes for an easy home LAN.) AirPort is based on IEE 802.11, no Apple-NIH syndrome here. I think Lucent had a hand in developing the product, and I know that several PC implementations are on the way, including at least one product which is contained on a PC Card
Here's the skinny from one of Apple's AirPort FAQs:
This paper on IEEE 802.11 I turned up might also be of interest. It contains the "Idiot's Guide to IEEE 802.11 Networking"
So... now everyone using IEEE 802.11 is screwed in France...But what about Quebec? (j/k)
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Am I the only one who thinks Microsoft is a misnomer? Perhaps Macrosoft would be a better fit?
If you are annoyed by this, have you ever wondered why they have to have a
light attendant showing you how to use the life-jacket and put on the oxygen
mask on EVERY flight? Even though there are probably only one or two people who
have never flown before and they could take them aside before boarding?
Ever hear of a modern incident where the passengers actually got any use of the
life jackets? Ever wonder why they do that drill even on flights that don't go
over any water?
Ever wonder why airplane seat-belts look like they are from the
40s, when ones that rolled up like in a car would be less annoying and safer
(three point protection)?
Ever wondered why the windows on every make of airplane are exactly the same
size? What good getting in "crash position" will do you?
I could on...
That electronics should actually be a threat to aircraft is a myth. Any
such problems could easily be fixed anyways. Welcome to the world of
regulation, my friend! These rules go back to the dawn of commercial flight in
40s and 50s, when seat-belts looked like that, when planes actually crash
landed on the water, and when anything that created radio transference was
strange and scary.
Apparently, nobody wants to renegotiate these rules because it is such hell
trying to agree, and well, the passengers aren't complaining.
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The issue really isn't what frequency range is being used. That should be pretty easy to deturmine even as a civilian.
What's of concern when it comes to that kind of thing is the EXACT frequency being used for EXACTLY what application (and what kind of intelligence signal is being used for said application). That's the information that'll get stamped with the big security classification stamp.
Wow nice, now if someone wants to invade France all they need to do is bring in a dozen or so G4s to knock out their airforce. Of course now Steve Jobs can show that not only is the G4 more powerful then the Pentium 3, but it's also a great weapon for world domination ;)
Wireless networking is great, but as Apple has found different countries allocate the frequencies differently. What may be a useable frequency in one country is likely not to be in another.
I wonder if it's time for the FCC to relinquish control of the broadcast spectrum to the UN or some other similar international agency? Or maybe, an ISO standard for frequency allocations.
But perhaps the simplest answer is to have the machines be programmable to use different frequencies which can be assigned and changed via software. The hardware for this would be more expensive however, because it would need to accomdate a much greater range of possible frequencies, and it would bring about a whole host of other issues. The least of which being users changing their frequencies to illegal ones in their country, and causing interference with the communications assigned to that frequency.
The iBook of APPLE encroaches on frequencies of the French Army
PARIS (AFP) - Ven 24 Sep 99 - Paris 16h07 time - the new portable computer of APPLE, the iBook, risk to pose delicate problems with the French Army: it will indeed use for the reception of the Internet without wire a frequency of 2,4 Ghz, reserved in France with the army except authorization, reveals the bulletin of CNRS " Internet Actu " of Friday.
Apart from 300 large French cities, where the authorization is tacit within one month, any user of apparatus in the tape of the 2,4 Ghz must individually request an authorization from ART (Authority of Regulation of Telecommunications). ART transmits it to the military national Office frequencies, confirmed ART and the rear-admiral Jacques Bizard, head of the military Office.
Up to now, ART and the army delivered a few hundreds of authorizations to users of these frequencies. " the last year, we received 500 requests for authorization, including 195 transmitted to the army ", explained ART.
Generally, they are companies which obtain a radioelectric network making it possible computers to communicate without wire.
" In general, there is no reason to say not ", added the rear-admiral Bizard. " But they are localised networks. On the other hand the iBook is an apparatus light and removable ", explained the soldier.
The case of a portable apparatus is obviously not envisaged by the texts, since the requests for authorization must " be accompanied by a plan of the establishment considered, making it possible to precisely locate the site of establishment within the commune concerned ", explains the form of authorization of ART.
An apparatus using the frequency of 2,4 Ghz can scramble an apparatus of the army or vice versa. " Contrary to other countries of Europe which do not have this constraint, in France this frequency band is a soldier. APPLE probably did not think there. But we will not put all our apparatuses at breakage because the iBook arrives ", launched the admiral Bizard.
" the problem was not taken enough in time ", it added. For the moment, the admiral should treat only 10 requests per week but it is likely to be found submerged if the iBook is a success.
On his side, the person in charge marketing produced of APPLE France, Hughes Asseman, remains serene, by recalling that the range of the iBook does not exceed 50 meters and should not pose problem of authorization.
" to receive the Internet without wire, the iBook communicates by radio waves with a terminal, Airport, connected on the telephone wire or a cable, in a radius of 50 meters. Unless being in a joint part with a military HQ, that cannot pose problem ", commented on Hughes Asseman. " We have zero concern on marketing ".
" We will have to examine the design features of the apparatus, for example to check that the range does not exceed 50 meters ", concluded from his side the head of the military national office of the frequencies.
The requests for authorization will have in any case to be sent individually by each holder of iBook using the Airport terminal, delivered in option and which must be launched about mid-October.
To derogate from this legal obligation involves the risk of imprisonment a 6 months and of 200.000 francs fine, noted ART.
Has a serious problem then.
Apple is just utilizing the IEEE 802.11 wireless lan technology that Lucent, 3com, and others are designing and selling.
A new.com article tells of Dell also planning on utilizing similar technology.
If France(and other countries) allocate their frequencies in this range for military or non public use, than *no* IEEE 802.11 specified devices can be used/sold/imported. I wonder how this will be resolved, else France will either need to develop their own technolog and solutions or they will miss out entirely!
-AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
Many fellow geeks are probably as annoyed as I am when the airlines tell you to turn your laptop, cdplay, etc off during takeoff and landing.
While I understand why we might to turn off some of these devices for fear of radio-interference (which is what the french are worried about here), I don't believe that a cd-player puts out any amount of strong EM-waves...
And also related.. Certain Brazillian airlines don't let you use any electronics -at all-
I really want to know what the difference between their devices and my devices is! (And don't tell me that the first-class cabin is "more" EM shielded than coach... unless that fabric curtain is steel-thread, the waves go both ways..)
Last thing: Many posts so far are along the lines of: Don't understand how the iBook could harm the french military's whatsoever, or block their whatsowhoosits.. Well, if the french are broadcasting in the 2.4 Ghz range with military amplitude (normally with lots of power!!), then the iBook's airport circuitry might get fried... Fun fun!! (WEll, those would have to be some STRONG waves, but its possible)
Maybe next time I'll get a first-class upgrade on that brazillian airline... I wonder if the magic that happens from flying first class wears off after you step off of the plane?
Europe has a unified standard "ETS 300 328" making 2.4 to 2.4835 GHz available. Unfortunately in France the Gendarmerie use the bottom of the band, leaving only 2.4465 Ghz upwards available. I think it's explained here.