[HN Gopher] Pentagon official: FCC decision on 5G threatens GPS,...
___________________________________________________________________
Pentagon official: FCC decision on 5G threatens GPS, national
security
Author : anigbrowl
Score : 171 points
Date : 2020-05-07 14:24 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (thehill.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (thehill.com)
| thoraway1010 wrote:
| 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.
| thoraway1010 wrote:
| 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). .
| upofadown wrote:
| It's more or less the same process where a developer buys land
| cheap and then with the help of a corrupt government rezones
| that land to something more valuable.
| skoskie wrote:
| > ... and to repair or replace at Ligado's cost any government
| device shown to be susceptible to harmful interference.
|
| Boy, if that's the actual text (it isn't) of the contract, they
| need new lawyers.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| 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 the "high" band that causes the
| issues.[1]
|
| How does Wifi 6 use the same spectrum as 5G mid, but get such
| higher throughput?
|
| 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?
|
| [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5G
|
| meta-edit: So, I put forward assertions, admitted humility and
| lack of expert knowledge, asked questions and linked to a wiki
| that I found to talk about the subject. If the person/people who
| downvoted me for the original content sees this, please note that
| the downvote button is not a disagree button. If you have
| substantive issue with the post, rebut it.
| pavon wrote:
| 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.
| kryogen1c wrote:
| I don't understand this. Is the DoD not subject to FCC
| regulation? Are there multiple bands that different types of GPS
| signals use (civilian vs military)?
|
| My understanding of GPS was that it is used in _civilization
| critical_ applications like satellite synchronization and
| plane/ship navigation. How could any sane human approve an
| interference with this traffic?
| dylan604 wrote:
| >How could any sane human approve an interference with this
| traffic?
|
| If there is a business application with a powerful enough
| lobbyist and/or large enough political contribution chest, then
| of course they should be given approval.
| centimeter wrote:
| For many years the government intentionally degraded the
| quality of GPS signals available to civilians. Look up
| "Selective Availability" - it was stopped in 2000, at which
| point consumer GPS became viable.
| [deleted]
| inetknght wrote:
| > _How could any sane human approve an interference with this
| traffic?_
|
| I think your assumption that people in charge at the top of the
| United States are sane isn't a valid assumption.
| WillPostForFood wrote:
| FWIW, it was a unanimous 5-0 vote by the FCC. There is
| probably a sane a rationale for approval, even if one
| disagrees with it.
| syshum wrote:
| >>Is the DoD not subject to FCC regulation?
|
| That is complex, but most likely no. Like the FAA they largely
| respect the civilian agencies but ultimately they exist outside
| of that civilian regulation
|
| >>Are there multiple bands that different types of GPS signals
| use (civilian vs military)?
|
| Yes the military GPS is different from the Civilian GPS, the US
| DOD has the ability in a time of war to cut off Civilian access
| to the GPS Network where only US military (and approved Allies)
| receivers will work. This is one (of many) reasons the EU,
| Russia and China all have their own GPS systems
|
| >>How could any sane human approve an interference with this
| traffic?
|
| While I do not know if I agree (have not read enough on the
| interference to form a definitive opinion) the supporters of
| the new network claim there will not be any meaningful
| interference, that the DoD is over reacting and if there is
| Interference they will be required to replace the equipment..
| stronglikedan wrote:
| > the military GPS is different from the Civilian GPS
|
| I remember reading at some point that the civilian GPS was
| randomly offset so as not to give extremely accurate
| coordinates like the military GPS does. I thought that was
| interesting, if true.
| pdonis wrote:
| The US used to intentionally degrade GPS signals available
| to civilian receivers as compared with those available to
| military ones, but it stopped doing that in the 1990s.
|
| The biggest difference now between military and civilian
| GPS is that military receivers use two frequencies, whereas
| most civilian ones only use one (since using two costs
| more).
| dbcurtis wrote:
| > >Is the DoD not subject to FCC regulation?
|
| > That is complex, but most likely no. Like the FAA they
| largely respect the civilian agencies but ultimately they
| exist outside of that civilian regulation
|
| Indeed, the DOD can do pretty much what they like regardless
| of what the FCC says. Of course, it all works better if
| everybody stays in their own sandbox, so the DOD does, by-
| and-large.
|
| In general, government frequency allocations and usage are
| coordinated by the NTIA Office of Spectrum Management. But
| here again, the NTIA OSM negotiates with the DOD, they can't
| enforce anything on the DOD.
| souterrain wrote:
| The FCC does not have regulatory authority over DoD.
| Negitivefrags wrote:
| Is this even actually directly related to 5G? I mean a mobile
| phone can't connect directly to space satellite right?
|
| The article says "Would allow telecom companies to deploy 5G
| networks". Is this satellite network for doing connnections
| between cell sites maybe?
|
| If that's the case, it feels like 5G is only tangentially related
| and only included in story for click bait given that people seem
| to want to get mad about 5G recently.
| dralley wrote:
| You're right, although Ligado's intent seems to be to develop
| 5G networks on this piece of spectrum.
|
| It doesn't have much relation to the current 5G ecosystem
| however.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| Indeed, the issue here is a company, Ligado, that plans to use
| the L-band spectrum.
|
| As this is the part of the spectrum that GPS uses, the Pentagon
| worries about interferences.
|
| This has nothing to do with 5G, the cellular standard, per se,
| and even even less with Huawei or China.
|
| Edit:
|
| In fact, cellular networks like 4G and 5G ones rely on GPS for
| correct synchronisation and interfering with GPS could have an
| impact on them. Just to illustrates that this is a really a
| spectrum allocation issue regarding potential interferences,
| this is not a 5G issue.
| [deleted]
| icegreentea2 wrote:
| Ligado (ex-lightsquare) product is a hybrid satellite
| terrestrial network. The specific component that people are
| concerned about is their terrestrial network which is very much
| a 5G creature (in so much at Ligado is marketing themselves and
| this approval as a step forward for 5G and IoT).
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| It's not a 5G issue, it's a spectrum allocation issue.
| icegreentea2 wrote:
| Fundamentally yes, but look at how both sides are trying to
| sell the issue. If Ligado and the FCC are both pushing this
| spectrum allocation issue as a question of helping 5G or
| not (and therefore hitching onto the we need 5G now or else
| China will beat us wagon), then I'm completely sympathetic
| to opposing coverage piling on the counter 5G bandwagon.
| Junk_Collector wrote:
| The counter 5G bandwagon seems to be largely comprised of
| conspiracy theories, dubious health claims, and
| unqualified assertions that people don't want more
| bandwidth. Why would you poison a legitimately important
| topic like spectrum allocation with associations like
| that?
| dvfjsdhgfv wrote:
| This is a genuine problem: the current polarization means
| that you are either in favor of 5G or a conspiracy
| theorist. This is not a healthy atmosphere for a rational
| discussion about long-term impact of 5G.
| sq_ wrote:
| I was under the impression that there are serious non-
| conspiracy concerns about the impact of 5G networking on
| weather satellits [0]. Something along the lines of "they
| use a frequency in the range used by 5G in order to see
| water vapor".
|
| [0] https://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/infrastru
| cture/a...
| grawprog wrote:
| Personally, I dislike how the conspiracy nonsense has
| kind of covered up the actual criticisms of 5g that
| existed prior to suddenly everyone thinking it's a great
| idea and if you don't, you're a conspiracy theorist.
|
| I seem to recall this revolved around, questionable
| tangible benefits vs cost of deployment, poor penetration
| of 5g signals through structures, a lack of devices or
| internet plans to take advantage of 5g, and some other
| things that just seem to have taken a back seat to all
| the bullshit.
| duskwuff wrote:
| One has to wonder if some of the nonsense criticisms of
| 5G (causes disease, government conspiracy, etc) have been
| deliberately amplified to _drown out_ legitimate
| technical concerns.
| jrockway wrote:
| 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 of the GPS frequencies,
| after all, because everyone knows that would break GPS (which
| already operate well below the noise floor).
|
| One time when we were working on testing Wifi interference, we
| tried to buy every possible 2.4GHz device to see what they did to
| our routers. We found these TV extenders (connect camera to one
| end, connect TV to the other) that claimed to be 2.4GHz but
| didn't interfere at all. We looked more closely with a spectrum
| analyzer and they were actually 1.3GHz and completely stepped all
| over the GPS frequencies. Did the FCC stop Amazon from importing
| these things? Nope. I guess my point is... the threat is real,
| but someone going out of their way to request permission from the
| government (as is legally required) is probably not going to
| cause many problems.
| iav wrote:
| 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.
| core-questions wrote:
| >everyone knows that would break GPS (which already operate
| well below the noise floor).
|
| Can you explain the noise floor bit?
| jrockway wrote:
| The reply that you already have is pretty good.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_code is a good jumping off
| point for further research (as is the wikipedia article on
| GPS).
| Junk_Collector wrote:
| There exists a fundamental level of electrical noise at all
| frequencies typically controlled by the background
| temperature that sets the minimum level of signal you can
| resolve before it gets washed out in noise. GPS uses multiple
| coherent (noise being random instead of coherent does not
| combine at the same rate) copies of the signal that can be
| recombined to increase their effective signal, so even though
| they are transmitted below the universal noise floor, they
| are above it once recombined.
|
| *edited for spelling
| ChuckMcM wrote:
| 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."
| izend wrote:
| Chuck your comments are always filled with great information
| and humour. Thank you for your years of contribution to HN so
| that lurkers like myself can be informed and entertained.
| josh2600 wrote:
| When light squared was shut down for messing with gps
| frequencies in their satellite network, the military did not
| say that light^2 was actually broadcasting outside of the
| expected frequency band. The deal is that the military just
| doesn't use filters on most of their broadcast and reception
| equipment so their operating frequency is actually way wider
| than they say publicly.
|
| This is because filters cost money and reduce the effectiveness
| of the broadcast system. If you could get away with operating
| over a much wider spectrum for any service, you probably would.
|
| This is why when the military says "this interferes with gps
| even though it's outside of the gps band were supposed to be
| using" what they mean is that they are using a much wider band
| of spectrum than what's in the specs.
|
| Ultimately, the fcc doesn't have regulatory authority over the
| dod.
| michaelt wrote:
| _> 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 overwhelm the GPS
| signal with 1 nanowatt of power.
| javajosh wrote:
| 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?
| wl wrote:
| 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.
| duskwuff wrote:
| Precisely -- no RF filter has a perfect "brick wall"
| response, and no transmitter will have a perfectly pure
| output either. GPS receivers already have to use some
| pretty crazy tricks to pull a signal out of the noise; it
| doesn't take a lot of interference to make that impossible.
| gorkish wrote:
| There is also the insertion loss and physical size of the
| filter to consider. It's a four variable problem where you
| can only optimize for any two.
| wl wrote:
| That's not accurate.
|
| Every GPS receiver in existence uses filtering. The question
| is, how sharp does that filter have to be? The GPS
| frequencies were chosen to be away from frequencies used by
| transmitters that might be near GPS receivers. Lightsquared
| proposed repurposing satellite downlink frequencies (which
| they bought at a discount because this restriction limited
| their use) for the purposes of terrestrial networking,
| breaking that assumption. In order to maintain similar
| functionality, GPS receivers would require significantly
| sharper filters, increasing bulk, cost, and complexity.
| dtech wrote:
| Thanks, this comment clearly explained why there even is an
| issue
| whoopdedo wrote:
| > Did the FCC stop Amazon from importing these things?
|
| Did you report it to the FCC so they'd know?
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| 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
| buffer of 20mhz or so between their signals and GPS. However,
| Ligado wants to transmit at ~10watts, and the GPS signal is in
| the neighborhood of a _femtowatt_ by the time it hits a
| receiver. That can apparently still cause interference. For the
| GPS chip in your phone it may not make a huge difference.
| However testing has shown degraded performance in aviation GPS
| receivers more than a mile away from a 10watt transmitter. For
| even higher precision receivers (think surveyor equipment or
| maybe an autonomous tractor) the radius of the degradation
| stretches more than 2 miles from the transmitter. Ligado wants
| to put their transmitters 1/4 of a mile apart.
|
| Source for some of those numbers here, and an entertaining talk
| if you're ever able to see it in person: https://rntfnd.org/wp-
| content/uploads/Brad-at-UAG-Users-Advi...
| andromeduck wrote:
| 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?
| madengr wrote:
| Supplying the power to the satellite, and getting the heat
| out. The RF amps are at most 50 % efficient, so you are
| dissipating 1/2 the input power as heat.
| dralley wrote:
| >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.
| joecool1029 wrote:
| > Like I know the new satellites can use beam forming to
| increase power for some large area for military use
|
| No, what you think you 'know' is plain wrong. Usually when
| discussing satellites, we're talking about a directional
| antenna that focuses a spot or wide beam for broadcast. A
| spot beam allows you to target a particular region, DirecTV
| uses spot beams to provide local broadcasts to general
| regions of the US. The military uses M-code shit on GPS
| with a directional antenna for the same sort of use case.
|
| Beam forming is a different concept where you get creative
| with multiple antennas broadcasting at once and exploit
| signal cancellation to improve the data rate by shifting
| the phase between them. It does increase your received
| signal but relies on the receiver transmitting information
| back to the satellite (which is not going to happen for
| GPS, at least not the vast majority of consumer equip).
| Beam forming discussed on HN just last month:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22784132
|
| > What's stopping us from deploying 10KW sats?
|
| Sat power is around and above that already, it doesn't make
| sense to increase the spot transponder ERP too much or you
| end up with issues like interference with adjacent bands
| since RF gets trickier to filter the higher the power it
| gets. Keep in mind a comm satellite usually has lots of
| transponders using maybe 100-500W each, so it adds up to
| some geosynchronous ones being like 20kW total consumption.
| Smaller LEO ones obviously not going to be close to that.
|
| GPS released a paper about interfering with itself: https:/
| /www.gps.gov/multimedia/presentations/2010/10/ICG/bet...
|
| Communications history is littered with failure stories of
| people who wanted to throw power at the problem, when they
| only needed to find ways to listen better.
| spiorf wrote:
| Deploying a 10KW sat is not a problem. Replacing a whole
| fleet just to keep it operating the same way as before is.
| beambot wrote:
| Perhaps it's not about the nominal operation as a 5G tower;
| rather, a bunch of powerful software-defined radios that
| _could_ interfere upon command is a pretty reasonable attack
| vector.
| tracer4201 wrote:
| Is it correct to say that this impacts GPS not only for the
| American civilian and military but also the rest of the world?
|
| What are other country's thoughts? It would be interesting to
| learn what led the FCC to make the decision they did... how did
| they deem the safety or consequences of this decision, etc.
| hopefully it's not driven purely by profit incentives that put
| lives at stake.
|
| Disclaimer: I have no background on GPS, whichever wave "band"
| the issue impacts, or much of any technical understanding of the
| topic at all. Casual observer.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| No it's purely an issue in areas where Ligado plans to offer
| its service, which is the US at the moment, hence their
| application to the FCC.
| reubenmorais wrote:
| The company wants to build a 5G network in the US, so it would
| affect GPS in the US. It's interference at the receiver, not at
| the GPS satellites themselves.
| trasz wrote:
| In this case there would be no problem whatsoever, since USA
| doesn't wage wars on the their own territory.
| kevindqc wrote:
| My understanding of this is that the company wants to use L
| band, which is the designation for the range of frequencies
| in the radio spectrum from 1 to 2 gigahertz (GHz)
|
| Doesn't 5G use higher frequency than that?
|
| Is the company, a satellite company, trying to use their
| satellites to provide 5G or something? So if the interference
| starts at the satellites, it could affect other parts of the
| world?
|
| >"We have presented to the FCC a proposal to utilize our
| terrestrial midband spectrum as a greenfield opportunity that
| is aligned with the commission's stated goals of providing
| the foundation of the 5G future," explained Doug Smith,
| Ligado president and CEO. "By deploying 40 megahertz of smart
| capacity on midband spectrum, we can create a model of at
| least a partial 5G network -- a next-generation, hybrid
| satellite-terrestrial network -- that will enable 5G use
| cases and mobile applications that require ultra-reliable,
| highly secure and pervasive connectivity."
| madengr wrote:
| 5G is a very broad term, which is supposed to offer 10x
| performance in all metrics over 4G.
|
| This seems to be the same issue when they were called Light
| Squared. The L-band was to be used for terrestrial base
| stations with very high power transmitters. The issue is
| that, even though several MHz away, from the GPS carrier,
| the transmissions will compress the LNA on GPS receivers
| with poor or little filtering, desensitizing the GPS
| receiver.
|
| Most civilian stuff now has decent filtering prior to the
| LNA so it can co-exist with all the other wireless crap
| crammed in your phone.
|
| I'm an RF EE and do a lot with GPS.
| Causality1 wrote:
| I struggle to see the point of 5G existing at all when I can
| already burn through the 22 GB data cap on my "unlimited" plan in
| an hour with 4G.
| apcragg wrote:
| The new standard supports more concurrent users by using the
| available spectrum more efficiently. There are new modulation
| and timing "modes" that enable better coverage at cell edges
| and in dense urban environments. There is better support for
| multi-antenna systems which means better coverage and more
| efficient spectrum usage. End-to-end latency has been
| dramtically reduced and the next 5G NR iteration (rel 17) will
| add a super low-latency mode. There is now a mode for IoT that
| enbales low-power communication. Most of these changes aren't
| going to give you 1Gbps downlink speeds but they represent huge
| improvements over even LTE-A.
| herdodoodo wrote:
| >U.S. Space Force Gen. John Raymond told the Senate Armed Service
| Committee
|
| >U.S. Space Force Gen.
|
| I know it's unrelated, but it is very strange seeing this title
| actually written out.
| zrail wrote:
| "the Fourteenth Air Force/Air Forces Strategic was redesignated
| as Space Operations Command (SpOC)."
|
| Because of course the Space Force would have something named
| Spoc(k).
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Space_Force
| mLuby wrote:
| Do they ever _not_ say that?
|
| News would be "Pentagon official admits that <thing> doesn't
| actually threaten national security of largest military on the
| planet."
| MR4D wrote:
| An interesting threat vector arises here for Huawei...
|
| Ignore all the stuff about backdoors and such for a minute. I
| wonder if the administration fears that Huawai could simply
| attenuate their cell tower signals at a high wattage to disrupt
| all sorts of things.
|
| I never thought of that before - "5G as a weapon".
|
| Definitely a weird world. I need to start reading Judge Dredd
| again to start getting caught up on the future.
| sa46 wrote:
| You might like Ghost Fleet [1] (or [2] for more colorful
| review). Ghost Fleet is essentially a white paper turned into a
| Tom Clancy style techno-thriller on what war might look like
| between China and the United States. Tactics from Ghost Fleet
| include:
|
| - Infected microchips from Chinese suppliers used to target and
| destroy the US Pacific fleet.
|
| - Disabling GPS with anti-satellite missiles.
|
| - Cyber attacks to disrupt the DOD communications networks.
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_Fleet_(novel)
|
| [2]: https://morningconsult.com/2015/09/08/the-defense-wonks-
| who-...
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| Thanks for the recommendation.
|
| > Infected microchips from Chinese suppliers used to target
| and destroy the US Pacific fleet.
|
| Awesome, the ideas that are often posted here have somehow
| made their way into fiction.
|
| > Disabling GPS with anti-satellite missiles.
|
| Just GPS? I'd expect surveillance and communications
| satellites to be much higher priority targets.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| IIRC: In the late-2019 BBC Click interview with GCHQ on the
| subject of Huawei, 5G, and security the spokesperson said
| information security wasn't an issue as we have end-to-end to
| handle that, the greatest risk was remote shutdown of the
| network. I assumed they're alluding to "in a time of war",
| falling back to non-5G wouldn't seem to be a big problem ...
| but then lots of our comms send to run on Huawei hardware
| already.
|
| Personally I don't think that risk is worth avoiding Huawei
| over. But then I'd be happy to maintain the top level of
| infrastructure we already have in the UK and work on bringing
| breadth to the networks using 3G&4G and taking an upgrade-
| hiatus. I'm not convinced the average person will get much from
| 5G except more infringement of civil liberties ...?
| 3pt14159 wrote:
| 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 NYT in their country ffs.
|
| But whatever. Politicians are reactive and don't understand
| cybersecurity and the few that do don't have the sway or
| incentives to really push for this. Though I will say one
| thing, in a cyberwar we'd brick China just as badly as they
| would brick us, so at least we have MAD working for us.
| nxc18 wrote:
| 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 can you count on the US, or any other country,
| to be a reliable partner?
|
| The POTUS is openly inviting Russian interference in US
| affairs ffs.
| strken wrote:
| If European nations were worried about vulnerability to
| the US military they'd probably start by removing all
| those air bases and nuclear weapons and leaving NATO.
|
| They aren't worried about the US, because the US isn't
| expansionist and generally only applies muscular
| diplomacy to nations that are small and poor. China has
| used military force to expand much more recently than the
| US, making it much more of a concern.
| MR4D wrote:
| > 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...
| tamdar wrote:
| You are talking about US vs EU and compare US to Germany.
| MR4D wrote:
| True, but for a good reason. If you take out the economic
| engine of Germany, you're done. They are the banking
| muscle of the EU, and once that goes, everything goes.
| smolder wrote:
| 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.
| kyrra wrote:
| FYI, Mark Esper (U.S. secretary of defense) has a commentary
| piece in today's edition of the WSJ about this, titled: "The
| FCC's Decision Puts GPS at Risk"
|
| https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-fccs-decision-puts-gps-at-r...
| brundolf wrote:
| I have yet to hear anyone who's not a telecom CEO or a politician
| say they actually _want_ 5G
| dylan-m wrote:
| It has its advantages, but it doesn't do much for consumers,
| except in some pretty extreme circumstances or dense areas.
| (Stadiums are a popular example, which, okay. I lived across
| the water from a stadium and my 3G phone signal sucked when
| there was something going on there. This got way better as my
| carrier got less bad and technology improved and the stadium
| added free wifi, but it's definitely a good problem to solve).
| It'll help other things more. Someone pointed out 5G could be a
| big thing for flying drones, in a near-future alternate
| universe where those are prolific, and there's quite a bit of
| interest in those. Trouble is a use case like that needs the
| infrastructure. So, everyone else is going to subsidize it by
| buying vastly overspecced phones, but that's the mobile
| industry in a nutshell.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| They are in a big rush because they have the power to do
| whatever they want with local towers, etc.
| xwdv wrote:
| I want 5G. I've always wanted the latest and greatest tech, so
| why stop now?
| jsight wrote:
| What benefit do you see to the telecom that doesn't stem from
| customer demand?
| vlan0 wrote:
| Telecoms want to take the place of WiFi. If you follow the
| non-technical 5G articles, there is a lot of promotion of how
| 5G _will_ replace WiFi.
|
| Within the last year, we denied Verizon's 5G proposal. They
| want to run fiber and wireless backhaul to provide indoor
| access for some buildings. It's also important to watch which
| door these proposals come through. It's a tell as to what
| their actual agenda is.
| brundolf wrote:
| I think they're hoping it will inspire (strongarm?) people
| into buying new phones, which will juice a slowing smartphone
| market for both OEMs and the carriers that take a cut of
| sales.
| dwater wrote:
| I've heard that top brass at the DoD is fixated on 5G being
| critical to military superiority in the near future, without
| really having any practical understanding of its strengths and
| weaknesses or real world applications. But it's become a hot
| buzzword and an easy way to drum up money and attention. The
| fact that China is a major player is also helping funnel
| funding into many money-torching projects.
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| All of the statements I've seen from pentagon brass are
| extremely critical of the FCC's decisions to let 5G operate
| close to bands used for GPS and weather forecasting.
| starpilot wrote:
| I want 5g.
| X6S1x6Okd1st wrote:
| There's basically one situation in which I'd like it: when in a
| large crowd.
| the-dude wrote:
| That is not going to happen soon anyways.
| X6S1x6Okd1st wrote:
| Measured in lived experience? Maybe not, measured in large
| scale hardware roll outs? It's not that far away.
| nxc18 wrote:
| 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.
| kelnos wrote:
| > _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._
|
| We don't have this today mainly because wireless carriers do
| the minimum required to compete with their minimal
| competition. It doesn't have that much to do with 4G vs. 5G
| or whatever. Even living in a city, I don't expect 5G to
| improve the situation all that much, unless carriers start
| really spending on their network.
|
| The ubiquity, reliability, and bandwidth will only be there
| if carriers make huge investments in their networks, which I
| don't expect will happen.
|
| You can certainly get what you want today, with 4G/LTE. You
| just have to go to a country with carriers that actually
| prioritize that, like Taiwan or Japan (and probably several
| other east/southeast Asian countries).
| close04 wrote:
| > I want 5G
|
| You listed the theoretical advantages of 5G. Whether or not
| the practice mirrors theory is debatable. But I can't help
| but noticed you missed listing any disadvantage. Most people
| are completely unaware of any because they don't make it in
| the marketing leaflets.
|
| When you say 5G I can just as well read: I want close range,
| LoS connections, substantially higher power consumption for
| devices and increased complexity, higher costs, security
| concerns, and the inability to take advantage of the speed
| not only because it's purely theoretical but because data
| plans did not keep up in 99.9% of the world.
|
| Listing only benefits can make even an amputation sound like
| a great way to keep weight off. I'm all for new tech and
| advancements but if it feels like 1 step forward, 1 step back
| then it's not much of an advancement. It's half baked and
| pushed just to sell "the new stuff".
| nxc18 wrote:
| We don't know about data plans because 5G hasn't been
| widely deployed yet. The same could be said for 3G->4G
| transition, but then we started seeing caps move from 500MB
| to 10+GB.
|
| Line of sight connections are great in crowded cities.
| Large venues can install cells locally for even better
| performance, and wide deployment of these cells is an
| accepted part of the deployment.
|
| Power consumption is an issue, but that's an issue that
| will improve over time and also applies to any technology
| upgrade in modern devices.
|
| I don't list the downsides because each one is either so
| minor as to be a non-issue, is totally hypothetical and
| didn't apply to previous generational upgrades, or a
| downside that applies to literally any new mobile
| technology and therefore doesn't need to be said.
| close04 wrote:
| > We don't know about
|
| We also don't know how fast and reliable 5G will be
| (beyond the severely limited range) but it was at the top
| of your list of advantages. Some of the disadvantages of
| current Gees you mentioned seem to be exacerbated by your
| mobile carrier and they may very well apply to 5G.
|
| > each one is either so minor as to be a non-issue
|
| For the purpose of making your argument you were willing
| to just downplay every disadvantage, ignore it, or just
| glance over it, and pump up every advantage. Many others
| aren't. The reason 5G is going ahead as such (half baked
| and _expensive_ , more so than 4G was in its time) is
| that most people don't know what they want, or what they
| get. But enough have the money and the promotional
| material says it's the thing to get. If it weren't for
| the slowing smartphone market nobody would have
| considered going ahead with this. But the phone market is
| catatonic so suddenly here you are convinced that your
| RPi with sensors can only work over 5G, ignoring that
| LoRa may be an even better choice for such applications.
| LoRa doesn't have great marketing though.
|
| WiFi is genuinely better for some of the applications you
| listed. Voice is still 4G. And the law of diminishing
| returns strongly suggests that the jump brings less
| noticeable real world difference than the numbers
| suggest.
| mcguire wrote:
| Everywhere you go? What was the range of 5G, again?
| antsar wrote:
| So you can exhaust the monthly high-speed data cap in 5
| minutes instead of 5 days?
| TomMarius wrote:
| That's my dream.
| nxc18 wrote:
| 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).
| wrkronmiller wrote:
| > 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.
| throwaway55554 wrote:
| > ... 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.
| takeda wrote:
| I live in LA and don't have this issues with crowds
| disabling me from using 4G.
|
| Regarding the earthquake, yes it is common that you can't
| access SCEC website right after an earthquake, but this
| is not a problem with 4G. You can have 10 gbps over fiber
| and the site still won't be accessible, because the site
| itself is bogged down by the traffic.
| nxc18 wrote:
| In my case the site was google but yes individual sites
| are always at risk of going down.
| takeda wrote:
| So in that case I don't know what problems you have. I
| did not had these kind of issues. The only issues I had
| was that there was no cell phone signal in certain
| buildings, and 5G won't solve that.
| asdff wrote:
| Also in LA and I find 4G is not very reliable. Who is
| your carrier? I use verizon. Speeds are bad and my
| connection drops all the time. I'm by ktown so maybe it's
| the density at play compared to other areas.
| Retric wrote:
| 4G can work even in crowded convention centers. If you're
| having an issue due to overcrowding, that's a problem
| with your telecom not really 4G.
| innocenat wrote:
| > 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.
| nxc18 wrote:
| 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.
| dharma1 wrote:
| 6G - 1TB/s
| Spooky23 wrote:
| It won't, because the favored status granted to carriers will
| put cable out of business, and you'll be stuck with Ma Bell
| again.
| dylan-m wrote:
| 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?
| nxc18 wrote:
| 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,
| blenders, etc. But why aren't gas lamps good enough?
|
| Heck, the same thing could be said about WiFi. 10 years ago
| no one would think a WiFi network should need to support
| 100+ devices, but here we are in 2020.
| vel0city wrote:
| 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
| kingdomcome50 wrote:
| 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.
| judge2020 wrote:
| 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.
| kingdomcome50 wrote:
| 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.
| asdff wrote:
| 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?
| ThatPlayer wrote:
| 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).
| smileybarry wrote:
| > 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?
| FlyMoreRockets wrote:
| > 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.
| asdff wrote:
| 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.
| mcguire wrote:
| My understanding is that 5G is specifically designed to
| improve that situation, at the expense of things like
| range and building penetration.
| kelnos wrote:
| The only way this works is if carriers invest in a ton
| more hardware, which means leasing more tower space,
| creating new tower space, getting creative with placing
| radios in areas where you can't really put towers, etc.
|
| That's expensive. What's also expensive -- sometimes even
| more expensive -- is running wiring to all those places
| to connect those radios to the backhaul network.
|
| I frankly do not expect US carriers to go to that
| expense, at least not universally.
| asdff wrote:
| 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.
| foxrider wrote:
| 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.
| takeda wrote:
| > 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 frequencies as well) and the
| maximum speed being talked can only be obtained during tests,
| but in the real deployment it has to be shared over all
| users.
|
| Another problem is that the speeds don't mean sh*t if we have
| the same data caps, in fact higher speed is worse, because
| many applications will switch to a higher bitrate and consume
| more data, even when there's no noticeable difference on a
| phone.
| leetcrew wrote:
| >> 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.
| brendanmcd wrote:
| agreed, the lower fixed costs of ripping up roads and
| driveways to install is key for understanding the
| benefits of 5G
| state_less wrote:
| 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.
| leetcrew wrote:
| > 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.
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| I'd like to have an alternative to the ISP monopoly that exists
| at my address (technically I have 2 options, but one of them is
| about 30x faster than the other for the same price)
| sl1ck731 wrote:
| I mean, I'm sure a lot of people want it if it improves their
| mobile experience. It isn't really something that the average
| person is going to celebrate on Facebook.
| brundolf wrote:
| 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 exactly? We can already
| stream HD video over 4G. What experience is 5G, assuming you
| actually have access to it, going to improve?
|
| I'm sure we can contrive some use-cases like streaming VR
| video or whatever (even though all current phone-based VR
| platforms have been sunsetted), but I'm extremely skeptical
| that it will do anything to make the average user's mobile
| experience better in any meaningful way.
| OrgNet wrote:
| > - That device will take a hit in battery life
|
| 4G was a real battery drain at first
| novaRom wrote:
| > It will require buying a new device
|
| all new modern phone models have 5g, what's the problem?
| Huawei, Xiaomi
|
| I have great experience with 5g, it's way more faster than
| LTE
| brundolf wrote:
| Only Samsung's very latest flagship release has a 5G
| antenna, and Apple hasn't even announced a 5G phone yet.
| Even if it had, the average person keeps their phone for
| several years, so almost nobody has a 5G device in their
| pocket right now.
| [deleted]
| apcragg wrote:
| Your first 3 points are all based on a complete
| misconception of what 5G NR is. You are talking about
| mmWave which is an accessory component of the 5G NR
| standard. Low and mid-band 5G use ~ the same bands (or n71
| which is the old TV band in the case of T-mobile) as LTE.
| Some Network Providers have been doing mmWave first because
| it is easier to deploy but their networks will also be mid
| and low band when they finish build-out.
|
| Maybe don't make blanket statements about a standard you
| clearly aren't familiar with.
| brundolf wrote:
| The term is hard to pin down when it's been diluted by
| things like AT&T rebranding their 4G towers as 5G towers
| overnight: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/01/att-
| decides-4g-is-no...
| omneity wrote:
| > 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 manage
| a fleet of vehicles
|
| - Search & rescue operations ...
| [deleted]
| johnbrodie wrote:
| 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.
| Mo3 wrote:
| Regarding your first point, I'm not sure if that's true, I
| think they use low frequency spectrum around 900MHz (just
| like LTE) as well, not just the 2000MHz+ to GHz spectrum in
| densely populated or visited places.
|
| Also, as far as I'm concerned, the latency gains are much
| more interesting as the ludicrous speed, and then not even
| exclusively for phones and new types of apps, but for IoT
| as well
| oblio wrote:
| There are 2 kinds of 5G, millimeter wave and non millimeter
| wave.
|
| The one you are talking about is millimeter wave 5G.
|
| The other one has pretty long range, goes through building,
| doesn't use up that much more battery and is overall a
| better technology (higher bandwidth, better congestion
| control and overall capacity for more connections in a
| crowded area, lower latency, etc.).
| takeda wrote:
| The 5G is pitched because greater speeds, and correct me
| if I'm wrong, but the millimeter waves are the reason for
| higher bandwidth otherwise it is similar to 4G that can
| peak to 1Gbps.
| Junk_Collector wrote:
| FR1 (the low band 5G) is capable of greater carrier
| aggregation and denser QAM modulation than LTE-A so it
| can achieve higher bandwidths than LTE-A under good
| conditions. It also has better latency and congestion
| controls which should provide a better general use
| experience as well as reduce degradation in heavy
| traffic. It also pushes more open hardware/software
| standards for base stations to reduce vendor lock-in.
| brundolf wrote:
| A sibling comment says the non-mmWave one uses the same
| bands as 4G, which would suggest it's not the version the
| OP is talking about
| filleduchaos wrote:
| I mean, I don't go around saying I want a more power-efficient
| washing machine but I'd obviously pick one up if it was
| available
| ohazi wrote:
| 5g uses more power, not less.
| danaliv wrote:
| I don't think that was the point of the analogy.
|
| s/more power-efficient/better/
| close04 wrote:
| > /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 beginning" type of thing. As it is
| today it's rushed and half-baked.
| Avamander wrote:
| > 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.
| close04 wrote:
| 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.
| beams_of_light wrote:
| While sometimes considered controversial for decisions made on
| intangible things like net neutrality, I expect the FCC would
| have a much better understanding of the electromagnetic spectrum
| than the military, and having all of them approve this tells me
| they see no threat to GPS from Ligado's spectrum use. Makes me
| wonder what the politics are behind this, especially when I see
| someone like Jim Inhofe involved.
| brenden2 wrote:
| It's in the military's interest to limit the freedom and
| empowerment of the public as much as possible. I would take their
| opinions with a grain of salt.
|
| With that said, this seems like something that can be easily
| solved with technology improvements.
| souterrain wrote:
| 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.
| brenden2 wrote:
| Meh, the military engages in far more life terminating than
| life saving.
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| 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.
| tehjoker wrote:
| 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.
| kube-system wrote:
| Deterrence is hard to measure, but US military superiority
| correlates with a period of relatively low global conflict.
| brenden2 wrote:
| Maybe so, but the evidence is weak at best. Some wars
| (like Iraq, Korea, Vietnam) were a sham. I'd feel more
| comfortable knowing nobody had nuclear weapons.
| CNJ7654 wrote:
| >I'd feel more comfortable knowing nobody had nuclear
| weapons
|
| I think we all would, they're terrifying devices.
| However, that ship has sailed. People know how to create
| nuclear weapons, and that information can never be
| removed from the world. The fact that these weapons CAN
| exist at all provides all the incentive a nation needs to
| create their own. The best we can do now is keep
| eachother in a perpetual Mexican standoff
| kube-system wrote:
| You'd feel more comfortable, but is that the same as
| actually being safer?
| brenden2 wrote:
| You could ask someone who was living in Japan in 1945.
| carapace wrote:
| Or someone living in Nanking in 1938.
| HenryKissinger wrote:
| > It's in the military's interest to limit the freedom and
| empowerment of the public as much as possible.
|
| This is an unfair view. The National Defense Strategy states:
|
| > Without sustained and predictable investment to restore
| readiness and modernize our military to make it fit for our
| time, we will rapidly lose our military advantage, resulting in
| a Joint Force that has legacy systems irrelevant to the defense
| of our people.
|
| And
|
| > Another change to the strategic environment is a resilient,
| but weakening, post-WWII international order. In the decades
| after fascism's defeat in World War II, the United States and
| its allies and partners constructed a free and open
| international order to better safeguard their liberty and
| people from aggression and coercion.
| brenden2 wrote:
| That's what they want you to believe. If you think the US is
| immune from having a military take over like Nazi Germany,
| you're deluded.
| michaelcampbell wrote:
| What, no "sheeple"?
| brenden2 wrote:
| You're making a joke, but I find it strange that people
| in the US aren't more skeptical of the government,
| especially the military and militarized police forces. To
| think the US is somehow unable to become a totalitarian
| state is naive. In Germany people didn't think it was
| going to happen either, many Germans didn't believe the
| atrocities were even happening and some remain in denial
| about them today.
| i_am_nomad wrote:
| Part of the issue here is that the military establishment
| and its peripheral industries in the US are so enormous,
| that most people who aren't in the military are close to
| someone who is, or who does business with it. We're all
| already in the Army, basically.
| Ididntdothis wrote:
| If you take nazi Germany as an example you should be very
| worried about armed militias , not the official military.
| Multicomp wrote:
| > I find it strange that people in the US aren't more
| skeptical of the government....military and militarized
| police forces. To think the US is somehow unable to
| become a totalitarian state is naive.
|
| 2nd amendment supporters and small government
| libertarians are both examples of groups who are
| suspicious of large governments.
| vajrabum wrote:
| OK, but Nazi Germany if you'll read some history was not
| ever a military takeover.
| brenden2 wrote:
| The transition was "democratic" yes, but it became a
| fascist state operated by the military.
| [deleted]
| Ididntdothis wrote:
| The military didn't take over nazi Germany.
| brenden2 wrote:
| In effect it did. From Wikipedia:
|
| > the German state between 1933 and 1945, when Adolf
| Hitler and his Nazi Party (NSDAP) controlled the country
| which they transformed into a dictatorship. Under
| Hitler's rule, Germany became a totalitarian state where
| nearly all aspects of life were controlled by the
| government
|
| In this context, the "government" means the military.
| Hitler used military force to enforce their rein. There's
| no way Nazi Germany could have done what they did without
| absolute control exerted by the military.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_Germany
| Ididntdothis wrote:
| Maybe you could say the nazis took over the military and
| be more accurate. Most oppression came from the SA which
| was a military like organization that the nazis had built
| up. This wasn't a military coup like in other countries.
| brenden2 wrote:
| You could think about it that way, but you should also
| know that Himmler created the SS which swore allegiance
| to Hitler. The SS also existed _before_ Hitler became the
| chancellor of Germany.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waffen-
| SS#Origins_(1929%E2%80%...
| rumanator wrote:
| > you should also know that Himmler created the SS
|
| I don't understand what point you are trying to make. The
| SS was an organization within the nazi party, not
| Germany's armed forces. Your example refutes your
| previous assertion that "having a military take over like
| Nazi Germany" because your quote clearly points out that
| nothing of the sort happened ever.
| brenden2 wrote:
| I don't think the distinction matters. The SS was an
| armed military force, with 900,000 soldiers.
| rumanator wrote:
| Wrong. The SS was a paramilitary organization within the
| nazi party. It started as a small group of loyalist
| bodyguards.
|
| Their name literally meant "hall security".
|
| And when Himmler took over the organization, the SS
| featured less than 3k members.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schutzstaffel
|
| You're either a poor troll or extremely uninformed.
| pmachinery wrote:
| > Himmler created the SS
|
| Not that it matters to your argument but as a point of
| trivia, Himmler did not create the SS. While SS member #1
| was Adolf Hitler, SS member #2 was Emil Maurice, Hitler's
| Jewish friend and driver since the early days of the
| party.
| Ididntdothis wrote:
| I am not sure what point you are trying to prove. All
| this stuff came from outside the regular military. So in
| the present you should be more worried about militias
| taking over than the regular military.
| brenden2 wrote:
| My point is simple: be skeptical and suspicious of humans
| with lots of power over other people.
| Ididntdothis wrote:
| I don't think you are doing yourself a favor by bending
| history in a shape that supports your (very valid) point.
| briandear wrote:
| This is being framed as a military issue, but the reality is that
| this would cause havoc with aviation as well, especially
| precision GPS approaches.
|
| Reminds me of a similar issue from 2012:
|
| https://www.gps.gov/news/2012/02/lightsquared/
| powellizer wrote:
| Appears to be the same company:
|
| https://ligado.com/press/ligado-networks-launches-with-goal-...
| neltnerb wrote:
| I'm a little worried that GPS is so vulnerable that these
| satellites could cause such disruption to be honest. This is
| satellite based, any country could be approving this plan and
| the impact on GPS would still be present since orbits go
| everywhere.
|
| I guess I'd rather they just... not... I don't really even
| think the trade-off in increased seemingly real health risk is
| worth making the cell network even faster.
|
| It's going to happen though, if there's no mitigation that
| makes GPS more invulnerable to interference it will inevitably
| fail when actually needed.
| sasasassy wrote:
| 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 Kremlin,
| have signal interference so they are very imprecise to target
| with GPS-guided weapons.
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| GPS wouldn't really work in a geostationary orbit (there'd
| be no way to tell if your latitude is North or South)
| marcosdumay wrote:
| GPS satellites are not on geostationary orbits[1]. And if
| you are using "GPS" as a common name, I still doubt you'll
| find any.
|
| Geostationary orbits are very far away, what leads to
| horrible timing properties, and all in a single plane. They
| are almost useless for positioning.
|
| 1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Positioning_System
| #Spac...
| duskwuff wrote:
| 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.
| duskwuff wrote:
| (Just noticed a minor error: GNSS orbits are roughly 20k
| km, not 20 km!)
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2020-05-07 23:00 UTC)