Pentagon official: FCC decision on 5G threatens GPS, national security • Hacker News Board

Re: Pentagon official: FCC decision on 5G threatens GPS, national security

#141

Post by leetcrew » Thu, May 07, 2020, 6:26 PM UTC

takeda wrote: post #96

nxc18 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I want 5G. There, you heard it. I’m not a telecom CEO and I’m not a politician. Edit: I want fast, reliable telecommunications everywhere I go. I want ultra fast reliable telecom in crowded cities. I want cellular that is competitive with cable internet. I want bandwidth available for IoT devices.

> I want cellular that is competitive with cable internet. I want bandwidth available for IoT devices. It never will be though. Whatever frequencies you can do wirelessly you can do over a wire without the interference of other users using the same frequency at the same time. Also a lot of promises 5G offers only sound good on paper. The higher frequencies don't travel well through walls (that's why it uses lower fre…

>> I want cellular that is competitive with cable internet. I want bandwidth available for IoT devices.

> It never will be though. Whatever frequencies you can do wirelessly you can do over a wire without the interference of other users using the same frequency at the same time.

this is true in principle, but not necessarily in practice. I suspect it will hold for the near/medium future, but I can imagine a world where much more money is invested in improving mobile networks than home cable connections, causing the latter to stagnate.

most "normal" people I know don't even own a desktop computer. there are no devices in their homes that connect via ethernet (or even have an ethernet port without a dongle!). at a certain point, it might make sense to ditch the home modem/router altogether and scale up wifi networks to the point where they basically merge with cellular.

Re: Pentagon official: FCC decision on 5G threatens GPS, national security

#142

Post by johnbrodie » Thu, May 07, 2020, 6:26 PM UTC

omneity wrote: post #128

_bxg1 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except: - It's shorter-range, so coverage will be spotty for a long time - It doesn't go through buildings , so even the urban centers most likely to get the first towers will have spotty coverage - It will require buying a new device, which OEMs love but the average person won't - That device will take a hit in battery life And all of this for ludicrously-fast new speeds on mobile devices that we'll use for... what…

> What experience is 5G, assuming you actually have access to it, going to improve? Remotely operated robotics due to the much lower latency. Think near instant reaction times while operating a drone with VR goggles, and all the implication this could have. Also many other use cases become more feasible: - Self driving cars with human fallbacks - Safer car racing - Actually smart delivery, where a single person can m…

I'll bite, can you expand just a smidge on "safer car racing"? I'm trying to figure out how 5G enables that and failing.

Re: Pentagon official: FCC decision on 5G threatens GPS, national security

#143

Post by kingdomcome50 » Thu, May 07, 2020, 6:26 PM UTC

nxc18 wrote: post #108

dylan-m wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These are reasonable, but what are these IoT devices and why can't they connect to your wifi, or to a zigbee network? Why do they need their own IP addresses?

I’d like to be able to put things like raspberry pi weather sensors, etc outside of the range of WiFi. I know in a lot of places especially on larger properties, there is going to be cellular coverage but it is prohibitively expensive to install WiFi. I’m honestly tired of all of these ‘but why do you need it?’ arguments. The same was said about electricity, long before anyone envisioned dishwashers, game consoles, b…

See: https://hermiene.net/essays-trans/relativity_of_wrong.html

We aren't talking about the difference between electricity and gas. We are talking about the difference between a fast cellular network and slightly faster cellular network.

Re: Pentagon official: FCC decision on 5G threatens GPS, national security

#144

Post by iav » Thu, May 07, 2020, 6:27 PM UTC

jrockway wrote: post #38

I don't think there's enough detail here to decide whether or not to be mad. The L band is huge, 1000MHz-2000MHz. GPS uses a few tiny slices of this band. Cell phones, amateur radio, weather radar (though not precipitation-detection radar), ADS-B, and a ton of other non-military things are in that band. Adding 5G may or may not have any negative effect on GPS. I doubt they are proposing to run their 5G network on top…

Ligado’s biggest investors are JPMorgan, Centerbridge, and Fortress. David Redl, the former head of the NTIA, supported Ligado’s mission while the GPS (part of DoD but also co-run by the DOT) was against it for as long as this issue existed. The FCC pushed this through because Ajit Pai is retiring at the end of the year (regardless if Trump wins) and wants a legacy of approving more commercial uses of spectrum.

Re: Pentagon official: FCC decision on 5G threatens GPS, national security

#145

Post by wl » Thu, May 07, 2020, 6:27 PM UTC

javajosh wrote: post #130

michaelt wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The deal is that the military just doesn’t use filters Do you have a citation for that? I would have thought the issue is not that GPS receivers don't use filters, but rather than no filter has a perfectly sharp cut-off and GPS signals are exceptionally faint. For example, if the GPS signal is 0.1 femtowatts at 1575MHz, even if you've got a filter that can remove 99.99999% of a noise signal at 1600MHz you can still…

Oh man, I bet there's a nice market of GPS jammers out there - especially useful for the home team in any action, since they don't need help with directions. I wonder if that counts as a weapon?

Some truckers use them for manipulating the trackers on their vehicles. Some of them are stupid enough to have them active when they are anywhere near an airport, which makes it far more likely they'll get caught.

Re: Pentagon official: FCC decision on 5G threatens GPS, national security

#146

Post by Rebelgecko » Thu, May 07, 2020, 6:28 PM UTC

brenden2 wrote: post #39

souterrain wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Excepting in this case where the military operates a critical, life-safety infrastructure used by civilians. I'm frankly more concerned with the FCC acting as a taxpayer-funded telecoms industry cheerleader. Dear FCC: You're regulators. You're supposed to be regulating. This is what you get for being public servants.

Meh, the military engages in far more life terminating than life saving.

How many lives has GPS saved? Even if all it did was prevent one KAL007 type event a decade, that's already thousands

edit: Korean Air 007 was an airliner that was shot down by the USSR after straying into their airspace. It had a huge influence on the decision to make GPS available for civilian use.

Re: Pentagon official: FCC decision on 5G threatens GPS, national security

#147

Post by pavon » Thu, May 07, 2020, 6:28 PM UTC

unethical_ban wrote: post #5

I have not read up on it - I am no expert. However, this is the second technology (first being weather radar) that 5G is reported to have significant, negative effects on. As a layman, I do wish we banned 5G entirely, assuming these assertions are correct. There is a greater public interest than even faster cell connectivity. The wiki on 5G isn't bad - I now get that it is a tri-band negotiation, and I assume it is t…

The problem has nothing to do with 5G inherently, and the vast majority of the bands it is approved to operate on will have no interference issues. The problem is that the current FCC has been very bullish on opening up more bands for mobile use even if there are legitimate interference concerns.

> And if the point of 5G is also to give higher speeds and capacity in dense urban environments, with denser antenna coverage, why couldn't they adapt the existing 2-6 GHz range instead of going up toward millimeter?

They are. Eventually all the bands currently used for 4G will be migrated to 5G. If you see T-mobiles ads about the largest 5G network in the country, that is all deployed on existing bands that were also approved for 4G. On these bands 5G will be a minor upgrade.

The millimeter bands are intended to significantly increase the number of concurrent users, but the places where it can be effectively deployed are very limited. It won't pass through buildings, and has short range. As an example, Verizon couldn't even cover a full sports stadium with a single tower, and that's a prototypical case of where millimeter is supposed to be valuable.

This latest issue is completely separate. It is entirely about a single company, Ligado, that bought spectrum adjacent to GPS at a discount deal because it came with strict restrictions on how that spectrum could be used to avoid interference with GPS. For years they have been trying to get the FCC to relax those restrictions for various different purposes, and this FCC finally approved. For previous requests there was tons of hard data filed showing that the proposed use would absolutely cause interference, and the requests were rejected. The latest approval does stipulate much wider guard bands and other measures to decrease interference. I don't know whether these measures are sufficient. The FCC commissioners unanimously think they are, while the DoD brass is insistent that they aren't.

Re: Pentagon official: FCC decision on 5G threatens GPS, national security

#148

Post by asdff » Thu, May 07, 2020, 6:32 PM UTC

nxc18 wrote: post #108

dylan-m wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These are reasonable, but what are these IoT devices and why can't they connect to your wifi, or to a zigbee network? Why do they need their own IP addresses?

I’d like to be able to put things like raspberry pi weather sensors, etc outside of the range of WiFi. I know in a lot of places especially on larger properties, there is going to be cellular coverage but it is prohibitively expensive to install WiFi. I’m honestly tired of all of these ‘but why do you need it?’ arguments. The same was said about electricity, long before anyone envisioned dishwashers, game consoles, b…

Well, this isn't like having electricity or not. Mobile internet already exists. What would 5G offer you that 4G doesn't? All I've read about its shortcomings in range tell me implementation will be difficult, and reliable 4G is barely implemented where I live in the second largest city in the U.S. Not trying to be critical, just interested in learning a bit more, how will 5G be any different practically speaking?

Re: Pentagon official: FCC decision on 5G threatens GPS, national security

#149

Post by asdff » Thu, May 07, 2020, 6:35 PM UTC

FlyMoreRockets wrote: post #122

nxc18 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I want 5G. There, you heard it. I’m not a telecom CEO and I’m not a politician. Edit: I want fast, reliable telecommunications everywhere I go. I want ultra fast reliable telecom in crowded cities. I want cellular that is competitive with cable internet. I want bandwidth available for IoT devices.

> I want fast, reliable telecommunications everywhere I go. Don't leave the city then. 5G has very limited range and doesn't work in rural areas where there aren't enough customers to provide needed geographical coverage.

Will it even be good in the city? I live in a city and 4G is pretty crap. Drops the connection all the time, speeds are poor, latency is high.

Re: Pentagon official: FCC decision on 5G threatens GPS, national security

#150

Post by nxc18 » Thu, May 07, 2020, 6:35 PM UTC

innocenat wrote: post #126

nxc18 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I want 5G. There, you heard it. I’m not a telecom CEO and I’m not a politician. Edit: I want fast, reliable telecommunications everywhere I go. I want ultra fast reliable telecom in crowded cities. I want cellular that is competitive with cable internet. I want bandwidth available for IoT devices.

> I want fast, reliable telecommunications everywhere I go. Already possible with 4G/3G in many Asian countries. Your provider just sucks. > I want ultra fast reliable telecom in crowded cities. See above. > I want cellular that is competitive with cable internet. Not gonna happen. FFTX is already at 10Gbp, and it is going higher as time pass.

Competitive doesn't have to mean faster. It just needs to be available and passable. 4G is pretty close in some markets, but with wide deployment of 5G mmWave, there might be just enough competition with the local cable monopoly to push better prices or speeds or both.

For context I pay a lot for 150 Mbps and really don't have any choice in the matter.