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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

#171

Post by ThatPlayer »

asdff wrote: post #148
nxc18 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

The shortcomings in range is just the mmWave 5G. Which is the same trade off as 2.4ghz vs 5ghz wifi of higher bandwidth for less range/pentration. You can still run 5G on the same old spectrums as 4G for the same range, and only slight improvements in speed (not the 1 gigabit that you'd get on mmWave).

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

#172

Post by spiorf »

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?

Deploying a 10KW sat is not a problem. Replacing a whole fleet just to keep it operating the same way as before is.

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

#173

Post by thoraway1010 »

The history of lightsquared, the company involved, is horrendous. They bought spectrum with a SPECIFIC restriction on it to avoid GPS interference - then proceeded to get a proposal approved that violates that restriction. The amount of bad faith dealing by this company was eye opening.

I thought Garmin / Trimble and basically every GPS company had sued them because of how terrible their proposals and behavior has been.

This is not traditional 5G, it's basically misusing satellite spectrum.

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

#174

Post by MR4D »

nxc18 wrote: post #87
3pt14159 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Colour me skeptical. I've seen enough to know that MITM gives you enough information or threat vectors. That said, I agree with you about Huawei and non-5G. We shouldn't be talking about banning them on 5G, we should be talking about banning them (and anyone outside of the western alliance, really) from selling gear in our countries period. National security takes precedent. China doesn't even let reporters from the…

Should the Europeans ban American equipment? We know the NSA intercepts shipments and tampers with network equipment, on top of everything else they do. We also know a foreign agent (with considerable Chinese debt who was elected with the help of Russian intelligence) is now in the White House. I know it’s fashionable to shit on China (China China China), but it’s not like they’re doing something new and unique. How…

> Should the Europeans ban American equipment?

That's up to them and their own risk assessment. One thing I know for sure is that if they did, the US would wage an economic war so fiercely on Europe, that Nokia & Ericsson would have a tough time doing anything in the US for years to come.

Further, collateral damage would include all sorts of manufacturing, which would cripple Germany.

Remember the imbalance here: European manufacturing is more dependent upon the US than the US is on Europe. Fully 50% of Germany's GDP is exports, and worse, Germany exported $118bn of goods, while the US exported only $50 to Germany.[1] While that doesn't seem a big difference, once you look at it as a share of each other's economies, it is immense (roughly 3% of German GDP, versus only 0.5% of US GDP).

[1] - https://www.americanexpress.com/us/foreign-exchange/articles...

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

#175

Post by ChuckMcM »

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…

Your GPS receiver is not going to be able to "see" the current satellites. All of the other people who share this spectrum do so "horizontally" if you will, this frequency band isn't reflected by atmospheric effects so omni-directional emitters are not visible to antenna that are looking "up" to the sky. The problem with this proposal is that the company wants to broadcast DOWN from satellites which these antennas will see and it will reduce their sensitivity to neighboring signals in the same band. Since you need 4 - 6 satellites for a good tracking lock on GPS, the likelyhood is that you won't be able to get that because of inter-band interference.

Can you fix it? Sure, you can add a $10 - $50 front end selector on the GPS devices to increase their selectivity to GPS only bands. That will raise the cost of "having" GPS across the board and legacy devices won't see the benefit so they will become useless.

It is hard to imagine that any technical voices at the FCC thought this was a good, or even reasonable, idea.

And on a humorous note, "U.S. Space Force Gen. John Raymond." I chuckle that the Space Force already has generals but of course it does, but not ones that "came up through the ranks, from Spaceman 1st class."

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

#176

Post by smolder »

nxc18 wrote: post #87
3pt14159 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Colour me skeptical. I've seen enough to know that MITM gives you enough information or threat vectors. That said, I agree with you about Huawei and non-5G. We shouldn't be talking about banning them on 5G, we should be talking about banning them (and anyone outside of the western alliance, really) from selling gear in our countries period. National security takes precedent. China doesn't even let reporters from the…

Should the Europeans ban American equipment? We know the NSA intercepts shipments and tampers with network equipment, on top of everything else they do. We also know a foreign agent (with considerable Chinese debt who was elected with the help of Russian intelligence) is now in the White House. I know it’s fashionable to shit on China (China China China), but it’s not like they’re doing something new and unique. How…

Russia could be nothing more than a scapegoat & cooperator in domestic plots. Imagine if the CIA wanted to manipulate domestic politics. They might use foreigners as a proxy to prevent being implicated for something outside their supposed mission.

I'm not saying that I believe that any more than the media narrative, or have any insight into unseen forces at play, but there is also reason for skepticism. Noam Chomsky as one example has said he thinks the hubbub about Russian interference is a farce. Disinformation and influence operations are real and powerful tools.

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

#177

Post by thoraway1010 »

thoraway1010 wrote: post #173

The history of lightsquared, the company involved, is horrendous. They bought spectrum with a SPECIFIC restriction on it to avoid GPS interference - then proceeded to get a proposal approved that violates that restriction. The amount of bad faith dealing by this company was eye opening. I thought Garmin / Trimble and basically every GPS company had sued them because of how terrible their proposals and behavior has be…

For those not in all the details - the spectrum was for earth to space communication.

They bought it and said they would use it to do earth based broadcast.

First - if this spectrum was usable for earth broadcast LOTS more people would have bid on it and used it.

Second - almost all their proposals were totally and obviously disastrous for other existing users of the spectrum.

With enough venture funding and sticking around for 10 years until you find a compliant FCC you can be rewarded for your bad behavior (and yes, they did finally change some of their proposals - but why this company gets to repurpose sat freqs at no extra cost for terrestrial use is ridiculous). .

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

#178

Post by duskwuff »

duskwuff wrote: post #133
sasasassy wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me just point out that satellites don't necessarily orbit around the world. They can be geostationary, and in fact they usually are I think. That is why you will find most US GPS satellites over the US, most Russian satellites over Russia, etc. Also, signal disruption is already very common as a necessary precaution at sensitive times and places. I think many military bases and other sensitive places, like the Kr…

GNSS satellites (GPS, Galileo, GLONASS, Beidou, etc) are not in geostationary orbits. Being in a geostationary orbit would put them in fixed "locations" in the sky, making them easily blocked by terrain and entirely unusable at high latitudes. GPS satellites are in MEO, at ~20 km MSL. Other GNSS satellites use similar orbits.

(Just noticed a minor error: GNSS orbits are roughly 20k km, not 20 km!)

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

#179

Post by dharma1 »

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.

6G - 1TB/s

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

#180

Post by foxrider »

nxc18 wrote: post #80
_bxg1 wrote: post #45

I have yet to hear anyone who's not a telecom CEO or a politician say they actually want 5G

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've not been excited about 3G, and I was only lukewarm about 4G, because 4G was meant to be something for laptops (still ended up in phones tho). But I am very excited about 5G - it's fundamentally different way if interconnecting stations is really cool. If it's half as good as the promise we will all see annoyances like super slow internet in dense areas or huge ping gone, and remote locations would get a huge step up from 4G. That's why I'm not upgrading my phone to something without 5G.
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