Bill-Higdon
Well-Known Member
Senate Takes Up Legislation To Hold 5G Network Builder Accountable - AVweb
Senate legislation would hold Ligado responsible for costs associated with GPS users accommodating its 5G network.
www.avweb.com
Senate Takes Up Legislation To Hold 5G Network Builder Accountable
- Thread starter Bill-Higdon
- Start date
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The comments on that article sums it up well I think; The FCC approved this knowing it causes interference, despite opposition from the DoD & many others. The individuals who signed that approval should be the ones held accountable, IMO.
The legislation sounds like the best bad option at this point to reduce damage from a bad FCC decision. Ligado won't field the hardware if it will cause them to get sued into oblivion. Unfortunately, Ligado has an FCC green light, so it's not clear the courts will rule against them.
Will the POTUS sign this new legislation? If so, then why not just get the FCC to rescind their approval? That's much more straightforward, and will enrichen far fewer lawyers. Oh, now I see...
Will the POTUS sign this new legislation? If so, then why not just get the FCC to rescind their approval? That's much more straightforward, and will enrichen far fewer lawyers. Oh, now I see...
FCC chair has changed since the approval, but I don't think they can just rescind approvals once granted, without some change in circumstances.
Arbitrary de-approvals would be a breach of due process, even if the original approval was pig-stupid.
Arbitrary de-approvals would be a breach of due process, even if the original approval was pig-stupid.
This whole thing is a stalking horse for political
and financial ambitions.
Just the bizzare notion that after a hundred years of managing the frequency spectrum very very well,that something something,no data,no proof,but 5 g is bad,somehow.
Gimie a break.
and financial ambitions.
Just the bizzare notion that after a hundred years of managing the frequency spectrum very very well,that something something,no data,no proof,but 5 g is bad,somehow.
Gimie a break.
But what is the worst that could happen? Ligado sues the FCC and we have a court case where the facts are presented and decided. The FCC just has to re-evaluate the situation and say they got the technical appraisal and impacts wrong the first time. I agree it looks bad and Ligado might win some compensation for the screw up, but better than the alternative.
But, I'm no lawyer, you may very well be right.
Interference from ground based radio won't matter after all the space junk gets finished pounding the gps satellites into more space junk?
One option:
Type A-1, by Eastman Kodak
5g uses the same frequencys bands as 4g.
the energy levels are simmilar.
The gps is millitary property and they would
without hesitation ,invoke any number of rights
and privilages if anything was jamming there signal.
So how is this an issue at all?
Bill-Higdon
Well-Known Member
The problem is this isn't just 5g, it's in one of the previous guard bands for GPS. Prior to the name change the company was know as LightSquared. Here's a link to some of the "high Level view" Ligado Networks - Wikipedia
And the current situation could not have come about without the notoriously possesive military giving the old "ya whatever dude"
to the use of THEIR guard bands.
Military,NASA,FCC, and all the other 3 and 4 letter agencies had to agree.
That they did is a miracle.
Except they didn't. Either 'have to' or actually agree. You'd apparently be surprised how little power individual agencies have over other agencies within government. For instance, do you think the FAA can stop a tower (or tall building) from being built near an active airport runway? Think again.
Yeah, they're definitely going to want their 'political contributions' back.
THE SPECTRUM,is to my most certain knowledge divied up and governed by agreement,under consultation from experts,
based on 100 years of precident,worldwide.
This whole issue is somebodys atempt to politicise this based on the big scary 5th G.
And as to tall buildings?Im Canadian,we put tall buildings in cities,we have 5 cities.The powers that be did take one of the only small airports
localy,so the sky diving club has possesion
of a hay field.
based on 100 years of precident,worldwide.
This whole issue is somebodys atempt to politicise this based on the big scary 5th G.
And as to tall buildings?Im Canadian,we put tall buildings in cities,we have 5 cities.The powers that be did take one of the only small airports
localy,so the sky diving club has possesion
of a hay field.
Although it's true that the FAA can't directly stop a tall structure near an airport, local zoning usually prevents it.
For example, a nearby town (Erie, CO) whose airport is surrounded by suburban development, established an airport overlay district that incorporates FAR Part 77 into the zoning code, effectively giving the FAA the power to stop tall structures near the airport. I think it's appropriate 1) that the power to determine the height of the buildings around the airport rests ultimately with the people of the town rather than a federal agency, and 2) that they have recognized the value of a safe airport and incorporated a good standard (FAR 77) to ensure its continued public value to the town and ensure a reasonable degree of safety to the surrounding land uses.
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The military vehemently opposed this idea, and assumed it would be denied based on various objections that they, and many others, including NASA and Garmin, raised against it. And it isn't supposition. They ran tests that proved the danger to GPS is real. The FCC did in fact take action to revoke LightSquared's temporary approval back in 2012 (this has been going on for years). They also attached new conditions to any eventual approval that required LightSquared (now Ligado) to prove non-interference before such approval could be granted. They required Ligado to use frequency 'buffers' away from those closest to the frequencies used by GPS, and about 99.3% less power than what they had planned in their 2015 proposal.
The controversy here isn't 5G by the way. The limitations and dangers have nothing to do with 5G. The media just uses 5G as a convenient moniker. The problem is the portion of the L band Ligado plans to use on their satellites to build their 5G network. It's very close to the frequencies used by GPS satellites, it's higher power, and it's fairly common to see bleed over on closely adjacent frequencies. Many GPS receivers on earth could easily be overwhelmed by a higher power signal on such a close frequency. Very few GPS receivers are hardened against such a possibility, which is why concerns have been raised about GPS jamming by adversaries in a military conflict. But this frequency band isn't required for 5G, so the implementation of 5G isn't the issue. Many companies like Verizon and AT&T are rolling out 5G on other frequencies that aren't a danger to GPS.
This also isn't a new issue. The FCC approval was back in April, 2020, and legislation was created to stop this effort last year as well. This particular bill takes a new tack, which AVweb found noteworthy, so they reported on again. It isn't an attempt to revoke the approval, but rather a way to make Ligado responsible for the potential consequences rather than something getting mired down in endless government agency bureaucracy at the FCC. But given our incredibly litigious society these days, I suspect any attempt to make Ligado pay for damage would be similarly mired down in our court system.
But in a nutshell, it appears the FCC is confident the restrictions they required are enough to mitigate the problem, although obviously many others are not. As is common in Washington, there's also accusations of undue political influence. It's certainly happened before, and it's happened at the FCC several times. They've had to reverse approvals before after they were found to be more politically motivated rather than technologically practical. They also have to be mindful of a great many different parties potentially affected by their decisions, and sometimes they only discover those parties and damages after the fact. It'll be interesting to see how this turns out. Like most Americans, we're just along for the ride and will have to wait and see what happens.
The controversy here isn't 5G by the way. The limitations and dangers have nothing to do with 5G. The media just uses 5G as a convenient moniker. The problem is the portion of the L band Ligado plans to use on their satellites to build their 5G network. It's very close to the frequencies used by GPS satellites, it's higher power, and it's fairly common to see bleed over on closely adjacent frequencies. Many GPS receivers on earth could easily be overwhelmed by a higher power signal on such a close frequency. Very few GPS receivers are hardened against such a possibility, which is why concerns have been raised about GPS jamming by adversaries in a military conflict. But this frequency band isn't required for 5G, so the implementation of 5G isn't the issue. Many companies like Verizon and AT&T are rolling out 5G on other frequencies that aren't a danger to GPS.
This also isn't a new issue. The FCC approval was back in April, 2020, and legislation was created to stop this effort last year as well. This particular bill takes a new tack, which AVweb found noteworthy, so they reported on again. It isn't an attempt to revoke the approval, but rather a way to make Ligado responsible for the potential consequences rather than something getting mired down in endless government agency bureaucracy at the FCC. But given our incredibly litigious society these days, I suspect any attempt to make Ligado pay for damage would be similarly mired down in our court system.
But in a nutshell, it appears the FCC is confident the restrictions they required are enough to mitigate the problem, although obviously many others are not. As is common in Washington, there's also accusations of undue political influence. It's certainly happened before, and it's happened at the FCC several times. They've had to reverse approvals before after they were found to be more politically motivated rather than technologically practical. They also have to be mindful of a great many different parties potentially affected by their decisions, and sometimes they only discover those parties and damages after the fact. It'll be interesting to see how this turns out. Like most Americans, we're just along for the ride and will have to wait and see what happens.
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Stl.Ed
Member
Also from Ars Technica - 11/22/2019
arstechnica.com
DOD joins fight against 5G spectrum proposal, citing risks to GPS
In letter to FCC's Pai, secretary of defense notes risks to military operations.
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