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

thehill.com

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

#161

Post by asdff »

mcguire wrote: post #155
asdff wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

My understanding is that 5G is specifically designed to improve that situation, at the expense of things like range and building penetration.

I understand that to do this you would need to blanket an area. I don't have any issue with that, it's the correct thing to do. What I do have issue with are these ISPs and telecoms are going to do a half assed job to maximize profit, just like they've done with every other technology in their possession. They can do this because you are beholden to them with no alternative in the market. Their track record is very poor to build reliable infrastructure, and for 5G to work you need reliable infrastructure. It doesn't matter what the specific technology is if you fail to build it optimally.

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

#162

Post by leetcrew »

state_less wrote: post #159
leetcrew wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> 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 whe…

I agree the internet is increasingly carried over radio these days (e.g. WiFi, LTE, Satellite). Wireless still seems pretty young and crude yet. There seems to be plenty of room to grow with respect to negotiating power levels, frequency use, routing topologies and so on. I think big fiber backhauls are still going to be a thing though.

> I think big fiber backhauls are still going to be a thing though.

absolutely, I'm just talking about wired vs. wireless as available to the typical consumer. the fiber would be the backhaul for an entire city block or neighborhood. just speculation.

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

#163

Post by close04 »

Avamander wrote: post #158
close04 wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> /better/ 5G is better. When the vision is finally realized. In the meantime you get a brand new washing machine that costs double, only works when you're next to it, and the spin cycle must be done in the old one. And by the time it's actually better you have to buy a new one anyway. 5G was rushed in a way 3/4G weren't because smartphone sales are slowing down. This is not the usual "there are some hiccups at the b…

> costs double, only works when you're next to it, and the spin cycle must be done in the old one. And by the time it's actually better you have to buy a new one anyway. You just described early GPS receivers.

Which says a lot. Having a first generation that comes with compromises and caveats is understandable and unavoidable. It still solves a problem where there's nothing else to even attempt it. In this light the current 5G deployment is indeed just a severely compromised one meant to oversell advantages that are nonexistent today and handwave the disadvantages. You'd have seen a more mature 5G deployment in a few years if the smartphone market didn't need a nudge.

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

#164

Post by kingdomcome50 »

judge2020 wrote: post #160
kingdomcome50 wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Then would something like the difference between 1 gbps and 10gbps ethernet apply? In the large majority of American households that have wired computers, 1gbps could handle almost any task including fast file transfers, yet 10gbps is something you can purchase if you think you need it and using it will result in even faster speeds.

Do you think the difference between 1gbps and 10gbps is a similar jump forward, in terms of progress, as the advent of electricity as a replacement for gas?

I understand that the GP's argument is that the effects of a particular technological advancement cannot always be understood at the time of, or before, its introduction. But we aren't talking about gun powder here... We are discussing an incremental change to an already existing technology.

As Asimov explains, the velocity of "progress", specifically in areas we already have come to understand in some way, diminishes with each step forward.

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

#165

Post by andromeduck »

Rebelgecko wrote: post #135
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…

I'm not an RF person, but the way it was explained to me is that GNSS signals are in the neighborhood of 1560mhz-1610mhz. With the advent of GPSIII, even more of the important signals are getting pushed outwards towards the extremes of that range. Ligado/Lightsquared initially wanted permission to basically surround GPS (1526-1559mhz and 1610-1660mHz) After lots of complaints, they amended their request to leave a bu…

Why can't we just greatly improve the signal strength at source by an order of magnitude? Like I know the new satellites can use beam forming to increase power for some large area for military use but it looks like even so total power is about ~500W right now. What's stopping us from deploying 10KW sats?

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

#166

Post by tehjoker »

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.

Usually I'd agree with you, but this is a case of DoD wanting to preserve infrastructure for targeting drones vs corporations seeing $$$ in robotic deployment and automation so they can eliminate jobs. Who knows who will win.

The drones thing is hyperbole because (so far) they drop the bombs overseas, but my point is that they have an interest in preserving GPS domestically.

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

#167

Post by vel0city »

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…

This has been possible for almost 20 years if you're talking data rates for things like weather sensors. GPRS radios first hit the market in 2003. Many networks are turning off their older GPRS networks leaving 3G as the baseline but buying 3G modems to hook to a Pi or Arduino can be had for pretty cheap. I'm no 5G hater, but why is 5G required for weather sensors?

Also, if you're interested in deploying longer-range wireless around a large property for things like weather sensors and other smaller data rate devices, cut out the cell network and go with LoRa. You'll get a few km of range for a tiny amount of power. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LoRa

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

#168

Post by throwaway55554 »

wrkronmiller wrote: post #99
nxc18 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So I can use my mapping application when I’m in the park. So I can look up an earthquake that just happened when I’m in the lobby of a movie theater (that really happened, and the 4G network really is not capable of handling any sort of crowd at least not in my area).

> the 4G network really is not capable of handling any sort of crowd at least not in my area As someone living in NYC and using 4G daily with few problems, I suspect this is a problem of your telecom provider not having adequate infrastructure or having a bad configuration for handling many connections to a few nodes.

> ... I suspect this is a problem of your telecom provider not having adequate infrastructure or having a bad configuration for handling many connections to a few nodes.

Which they'll likely do for their 5G network as well because, well, telecoms do the minimum possible.

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

#169

Post by smileybarry »

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…

> I’d like to be able to put things like raspberry pi weather sensors, etc outside of the range of WiFi.

Weather sensors and such are pretty low-bandwidth. Why not just get a 3G/4G hat and a SIM with <1GB monthly bandwidth?

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

#170

Post by dralley »

andromeduck wrote: post #165
Rebelgecko wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not an RF person, but the way it was explained to me is that GNSS signals are in the neighborhood of 1560mhz-1610mhz. With the advent of GPSIII, even more of the important signals are getting pushed outwards towards the extremes of that range. Ligado/Lightsquared initially wanted permission to basically surround GPS (1526-1559mhz and 1610-1660mHz) After lots of complaints, they amended their request to leave a bu…

Why can't we just greatly improve the signal strength at source by an order of magnitude? Like I know the new satellites can use beam forming to increase power for some large area for military use but it looks like even so total power is about ~500W right now. What's stopping us from deploying 10KW sats?

>Why can't we just greatly improve the signal strength at source by an order of magnitude? Like I know the new satellites can use beam forming to increase power for some large area for military use but it looks like even so total power is about ~500W right now. What's stopping us from deploying 10KW sats?

Even assuming that the very smart and capable people who developed GPS haven't thought about that already, there is zero-point-zero percent chance that the government will (or should) turn 24 satellites that cost 500 million dollars each into very expensive flying paperweights, for the benefit of some tiny 5G startup.

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