FCC on Ultra-Wideband, DSL Services 137
ibirman writes: "According to Yahoo, the FCC has approved limited use of Ultrawideband (UWB) technology above 3.1 gigahertz. The article states that Sprint PCS among others has been campaigning to keep the minimum above 6 gigahertz claiming "interference". From what I have read, interference is not an issue, so I wonder what their real agenda is? Funny that the article does not mention that UWB could revolutinize high speed wireless networking." There's a Newsbytes story that decribes an upcoming ruling on DSL providers, which would exempt DSL carriers from the open-access requirements in place for most telephone services. There are a few links to statements on the front page of fcc.gov, but I don't see the actual orders for either of these yet.
Re:DSL requires a phone (Score:1)
But it's not the phone companies fault - it's the fault of the business/legal system, which has created a situation where your personal information/statistics are valuable assets for any business.
And the situation where they can consider that information to be theirs, not yours, without having to even give you any sort of consideration for the percentage you've donated to them.
And it's your fault too, for giving them the information in the first place. After all, at some point in space and time you decided that getting a shiny bauble was worth more than the money you were forking over - it was worth the cash plus your personal information.
So don't bitch if you've participated in this in any way. You deserve it. The only way to win is not to play...
Re:DSL requires a phone (Score:1)
well call me nuts, but it seems to me that the amount of money a company/organization has is directly proportional to how evil and immoral they are in their bussiness practices...
oh wait.. then that would make the government righteously uncurrupt.. what was i thinking??
Considerable concern (Score:5, Informative)
sPh
Okay for very short distances (Score:4, Informative)
It's possible that a UWB system could interfere with these, but your UWB transmitter would have to be very close to your cell phone or TV. It's only been approved for very short distances, so there shouldn't be much risk of interfering with other people's cell phone reception, just that in your own home or office. Still, it's an interesting loophole for people who want to block cell phone signals. ("No officer, this isn't an illegal cell phone jammer, it's a UWB network!")
Re:Okay for very short distances (Score:3, Informative)
Also, the signal strength as received by a GPS unit is incredibly low - very close to undetectable. It doesn't take much to disrupt them. In fact a month or so ago there was a NOTAM for a GPS outage in Phoenix AZ over a three day period. No reason was given but it is assumed that a new satellite was being tested at Motorola's satellite assembly facility - enough to shut down GPS in the entire county.
Here's a more complete article: GPS World [gpsworld.com].
sPh
Re:Okay for very short distances (Score:2)
Re:Okay for very short distances (Score:2)
I'll Take the Bait (Score:2)
Someone needs to say it, just to thrash out the issue.
There, it's done. Call me a conspiracy theorist!
Re:Considerable concern (Score:2, Informative)
After reading that article, it would seem to me that there would need to be considerable constraints put on the service providers and the frequencies that they use.
From the article @ gpsworld: Of the six carriers with national operations, three -- Sprint, Verizon, and Nextel -- are incorporating network-assisted GPS (A-GPS) into their implementation of E911. [snip]
Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz expressed the Department of Defense's "deep concern that, unless properly controlled, proliferation of UWB devices intended to be mass-marketed to the public could cause harmful interference" to GPS and other critical national security and safety-of-life systems.
I'm all for high speed wireless connections... but not at the cost of public safety. Using frequencies that are not going to interfere seems to be the best way, and I would hope that in the end, that is the way it ends up
Re:Considerable concern (Score:1)
UWB aint gonna make anything worse other than increase the local noise threshhold slightly.
Re:Considerable concern (Score:2, Interesting)
My guess is cell phone companies:
1. - covet the frequencies for their own expansion, and or
2. - are afraid of comeptition, especially from VoIP across wireless networking. Your Palm/PocketPC could do data and voice, all without the cellphone company.
As such, I would expect them to push for regulation that drives the cost so high that the freqs go unused, so they later can "claim" them based on their lack of use.
Re:Considerable concern (Score:2)
Re:Considerable concern (Score:1)
Re:Considerable concern (Score:2)
Re:Considerable concern (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Considerable concern (Score:2)
How much is our dependence on legacy technology really holding us back?
Re:Considerable concern (Score:1)
UWB will just lower this percentage reliably slightly.
In any case the UWB emission limit (in terms of EIRP) in the GPS band is at -65dBm (averaged over 1MHz I believe) which is -25dB under the current Part 15 limit for unintentional radiator. So you see the FCC took concerns about UWB's effects on GPS very very seriously.....
D.
Re:SCSI naming (Score:3, Funny)
This would make it easy to market to Trailer Parks.
"New, DoubleWide Broadband"
It's from radio terminology of generations ago (Score:3, Informative)
It's from radio terminology from (human) generations ago.
ELF (extremely low frequency)
VLF (very low frequency)
LF (low frequency)
HF (high frequency)
VHF (very high frequency)
UHF (ultra high frequency)
microwave (microwave - subdivided in to bands designated by one or two letters which HAVE changed)
IR (infrared)
X-ray (x-ray)
Gamma ray (gamma ray)
I think there may have been a medium frequency but I'm not sure. There's also:
IF (intermediate frequency) which is unrelated, referring to an internal signal in a superheterodyne receiver.
RF (radio frequency) which is more generic, covering everything from ELF to UHF or perhaps microwave, although its use tends to drop off outside the range between LF and HF.
Similarly there was narrow band and wide/broad band (referring to signal bandwidth significantly less than, or more than, that of AM or early-version FM signals modulated by telephone-quality voice). It's logical for radio engineers to apply the same set of modifiers when they start working with more extreme schemes and have to differentiate them from previous technology.
Re:It's from radio terminology of generations ago (Score:1)
ehh whatever
Yennek
Re:It's from radio terminology of generations ago (Score:1)
Lightning Rod also was slightly inaccurate, in that "microwave" is more of a slang term, there is the three letter abbreviation "SHF" for super high frequency.
Re:It's from radio terminology of generations ago (Score:2, Informative)
Re:It's from radio terminology of generations ago (Score:1)
pure vindictiveness (Score:5, Informative)
In the early 1990s, however, Thomas E. McEwan, then an employee at the Livermore lab, came up with a related idea for a "micropower impulse radar" that employed different circuitry and worked at much lower power. His device can function for years on a couple of penlight batteries, he states. He got patents, too, and assigned them to his employer, which started licensing the invention to manufacturers. But McEwan failed to cite Fullerton's invention as "prior art" in his original patent application.
Sprint backed the wrong horse and spent millions in licensing fees to Livermore lab. Their opposition to UWB is pure vindictiveness.
Now Time Domain refuses to license UWB to sprint, putting them at an extreme disadvantage to ATT and other competitors.
Beautiful technology though... this is one of those real "could change the world" technologies like the step from Analog to Digital signaling
Re:pure vindictiveness (Score:2, Informative)
But there's no mention on Google of any links between Sprint and McEwan, or Sprint and Fullerton.
Re:pure vindictiveness (Score:1)
The amount of interference this technology will cause depends on the amount of power used in signalling. This technology is not anymore peak bandwidth efficient then say CDMA, TDMA or FDMA. It is rather a random access version of TDMA, so it does share some random access efficiencies with say CDMA. But I don't know where you come up with:
> this is one of those real "could change the
> world" technologies like the step from Analog
> to Digital signaling
The only potential advantage that this has over say CDMA is in some multipath interference scenarios. It also has many disadvantages.
Statements along the lines of "this technology will never cause interference" are pure rubbish. Can you lay off the bull and explain why this is such a revolution?
BTW, I am not from Sprint nor do I dispute your statements regarding the "vindictiveness" issues.
Pardonne
Re:pure vindictiveness (Score:1)
Re:pure vindictiveness (Score:1)
an argument but what if 100 companies want to do
do the same thing? Sure if everybody in the world each gave me a buck it wouldn't kill them. But I hardly think I am the only guy with this smart idea. Shit piles up.
Pardonne
legitimate concerns (Score:3, Interesting)
In fact, there is no question that UWB interference occurs. The question is whether one can allow UWB to be used at any power level without seriously disrupting normal radio traffic when it becomes widely adopted.
Of course, UWB is no threat to other UWB systems. Therefore, UWB licensees would not be opposed to it. In fact, one might well interpret UWB to be an attempt at doing an end-run around current channel allocations, and, ultimately, an attempt at forcing anybody who wants to have some sort of reliable radio communications to buy proprietary UWB technology. Whether it actually is or not depends on the level of interference it causes when deployed widely, and that is still an open question.
In other words, there is no reason to rush UWB to market--we can take our time testing the technology. In fact, there is no real reason for the FCC to approve UWB before the patents run out--why should we increase the noise floor of all our channels for the benefit of a single patent holder? If UWB is still interesting after the patents run out, great.
OT: my bitch (Score:1)
Re:OT: my bitch (Score:2)
Re:OT: my bitch (Score:1)
It wasn't so much a post directed at this thread, either, it was one of those things where I'd "had enough" and hit [reply] at the easiest possible moment
PCS has 4.2 to 6GHz... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:PCS has 4.2 to 6GHz... (Score:2)
Re:PCS has 4.2 to 6GHz... (Score:2)
Wait one minute... (Score:4, Interesting)
However, companies like mobile telephone service provider Sprint PCS and the powerful lobbying arm of the airline industry, among others, had urged the FCC to prohibit the use of UWB technologies below 6 gigahertz.
Now, I can certainly understand how a mobile phone service provider such as Sprint could have less-than-credible reasons for not wanting to move forward with this initiative... However, I do not understand what the airline industries motivation would be to get involved here except for a genuine concern for unsafe interference.
Personally, I could careless if my cell phone has a little bit of static as a result of leveraging UWB, but if my plane crashes due to interence then I may not be quite so understanding...
Then again, perhaps I am missing something obvious. Anyone have any thoughts on what ulterior motives the airline industry may have here?
Re:Wait one minute... (Score:2)
Aircraft radionavigation from 900MHz to 1350MHz(with a gap from 1215 to 1300MHz), then again from 2700 to 2900 (Aeronautical Radionavigation Meterological Aids).
I assume the latter would be weather reports which could be VERY important (think microbursts downing planes).
There's also 2900-3000 which is labeled "Maritime Radionavigation" which I'd assume wouldn't be terribly affected (not to many cell phones in the middle of the Atlantic.
Re:Wait one minute... (Score:5, Informative)
As you can imagine, this introduces some inefficiencies in routing! The airlines would desperately like to go to "Free Flight", which would allow them to route airplanes as more or less as desired (this is a vast simplification for you aero-nauts out there, and leaves out the problem of hubs entirely).
But Free Flight depends not only on GPS, but the advanced location services that the FAA and other GPS consumers would like to roll out over the next ten years. Those services will require absolutely pure signals on the existing allocated freqs, and possibly more freqs as well.
So they don't want anything messing with the GPS signal.
sPh
Re:Wait one minute... (Score:2, Informative)
When I fly in the US, I use airways but since I'm flying VFR (visual flight rules), I could go direct. The last flight over about 1/2 the US would have resulted in a savings of less than 15 nmi (25km) over a course of over a thousand miles.
Here is a small picture [faa.gov] of airways near salt lake city. The airways are grey lines, airports are circles and the triangles are VOR (radio beacons)
Side issue: Don't use cell phones in planes... (Score:2)
But it's a good idea not to use them in a plane - unless it's an emergency. They won't screw up the navigation equipment. But from a plane they can be "heard" by dozens or hundreds of cells on the ground (depending on your altitude and location) and they chew up one call's worth of bandwidth resource at each cell base site.
Re:Side issue: Don't use cell phones in planes... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Wait one minute... (air line info) (Score:1)
1) GPS: Airports are located in congested areas which already have to deal with skyscapers, illegal parking garages, etc. Now with UWBs which walk right on L2 (GPS signal band) perhaps not individually but in aggregate it's likely there will be interference issues.
2) The Microwave Landing System widely used in Europe has a 5Ghz signal. This is also reserved band but may be interferred with by UWB. Like GPS this is used for bad weather landings. Not a time you want interference.
So, yes the airlines are rightly concerned and no it doesn't matter in the face of greedy telecoms. Until someone gets hurt...
Astronomers get the shaft again (Score:4, Interesting)
It looks like business wins out over the quest for knowledge once again.
Re:Astronomers get the shaft again (Score:3, Interesting)
It does however, present a threat to users of licensed radio bandwidth, because it eliminates the need to assign freqencies for specific uses. It can coexist with existing radio applications. The potential for competition with traditional broadcasters and spectrum users is what has Sprint, et. al. worried.
It is as if someone figured out how to piggyback signals on the PSTN without needing the cooperation of the Bells, and without any impact on existing applications of the cable plant. Only Sprint does not own the air, like the Bells own the wires.
I guess now we get to see who owns the FCC. This has been a long time coming. I first read about nano-pulse radio almost 10 years ago, when TimeDomain first began petitioning the FCC for permission to conduct tests.
Re:Astronomers get the shaft again (Score:2)
I symphathize with you, but I think its kind of unrealistic to expect valuable tech (and I don't mean just this one) to go unused because a very small group wants to do some pretty abstract science. It'd be one thing if we were holding a conversation with another galaxy and deploying a new tech would stop it, it's quite another for basic sciences which has no short term payoff.
Re:Astronomers get the shaft again (Score:1)
What you say you're looking "sideways". Well I say don't those things Astronomies look at move
so that your telescope never points in the same direction if it is tracking something. So you might breifly be looking at a UWB transmitter straight on (though even that's very unlikely). However, you integrate over several hours of time don't you. So that brief bit of crappy data will be lost in your good data.
Frankly, I think the astronomy community whines about everybody else who uses the radio spectrum.
For me the people who will be the most effected by UWB aren't astronomers, and aren't GPS people either (due to the emission masks). The one who are likely to be most hurt are the satellite remote sensing people. Particularly the synthenitic aperture radar people. As opposed to astromoners, remote-sensing SAR looks down from a satellite to the Earth and could potentially see a huge number of UWB terminals. The combined interference of terminals will add significant noise to their data.
Its a shared resources, and please believe that the people who design communications systems are equally aware of this and try and take the measures necessary to avoid interference to others
D.
The real agenda... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:The real agenda... (Score:2, Informative)
I guess you somehow equate computer processors with radio transcievers?
Re:The real agenda... (Score:1)
While comparing Geo-synchronus communications to terestrial communications may be different in scale, the principles of their design are the same.
What the hell is the FCC Thinking? (Score:5, Insightful)
"Should the FCC reclassify digital subscriber lines (DSL) as an information service as opposed to a traditional wire-line service, it could effectively loosen federal rules that require Bell companies and other incumbent carriers to offer their competitors equal access to the telecommunications networks they control."
What the hell? After the Bells displayed their ability to cut of CLECs like they were batting down baby seals within the existing rules?
What world is the FCC living in?
Re:What the hell is the FCC Thinking? (Score:3, Insightful)
I can't believe that Powell knows ANYTHING about the state of broadband in the US; this basically grants the commercial monopoly to the Bells, and the residential monopoly to the cable co's. This will make broadband more expensive and slow its expansion into new areas. He better be following this up with something else (like feds mandating coverage areas) or this is a prescription for failure.
Re:What the hell is the FCC Thinking? (Score:1)
In my neighborhood, I can buy video/data/voice from my cable operator (AT&T). They made a decision to invest the capital to be able to do this because they know they won't be forced to give up space in their cabinets for their competitors' equipment. On the other hand, equipment [itpapers.com] exists [nlc.com] to give telephone companies the ability to offer video programming (as well as voice and data) over their existing outside plant, but they have dragged their feet deploying it over concerns that they will not reap the full benefits of the substantial capital investment required.
Re:What the hell is the FCC Thinking? (Score:2)
my cable operator (AT&T). They made a decision to invest the capital to be able to do this because they know they won't be forced to give up space in their cabinets for their competitors' equipment.
On the other hand, the phone companies built most of their infrastructure out with financing partially based on taxes ("Universal service fees"), and share infrastructure with the power and cable companies every day. I don't believe the RBOCs should own the COs, period.
telephone companies... have dragged their feet deploying it over concerns that they will not reap the full benefits of the substantial capital investment required.
Not at all! Firstly, the telephone companies have not dragged their feet over any development where they had competition (consider DSL vs. ISDN - the latter withered on the vine (no competition), the former they announced record signups as their competition all went bankrupt because they couldn't get wiring orders fulfilled in a timely manner... odd, that.) Secondly, if the phone companies have problems with advanced technologies, it should be kept in mind that POTS is often their preferred area of expertise. Phone companies like phone stuff - it's congenital.
Re:What the hell is the FCC Thinking? (Score:1)
True enough.
and share infrastructure with the power and cable companies every day.
Can you elaborate on this?
Firstly, the telephone companies have not dragged their feet over any development where they had competition
We may be talking apples and oranges. I was speaking in the larger context of "the bits business," which encompasses voice, data, and video. My primary argument is that the MSO's are invading RBOC's core revenue stream (telephony) in an unregulated environment, but that regulation imposed on RBOC's puts them at a competitive disadvantage when they contemplate going after the cable companies by offering video programming -- even though the cost per subscriber to deploy is equivalent (according to recent statements by Qwest, which has a VDSL trial underway). Your points about RBOC's vs. CLEC's are well taken -- my original post was attempting to answer the question of what the FCC is thinking, which was posed by its parent post.
Re:What the hell is the FCC Thinking? (Score:2)
>and share infrastructure with the power and cable companies every day.
Can you elaborate on this?
Utility poles, specifically. Also, demarc points are often shared between phone and cable at customer premises - even most houses.
This may sound trivial, but I think it's significant. Not only do they share the poles, but they don't necessarily have personnel on hand to oversee that sharing as they do at the CO. Also, one could argue that poles have overall higher maintenance issues than COs, given their exposure to weather and trees.
I was speaking in the larger context of "the bits business," which encompasses voice, data, and video. My primary argument is that the MSO's are invading RBOC's core revenue stream (telephony) in an unregulated environment, but that regulation imposed on RBOC's puts them at a competitive disadvantage when they contemplate going after the cable companies by offering video programming...
I see your point, but I don't feel that this ruling achieves that goal, because rather than specifically approach the problem of loosening regulatory issues in the specific areas of non-voice traffic, this ruling hands them a huge unrelated advantage in an area they've already made moot by "creative work order fulfillment."
Of course, I may be biased, as anyone will note having read any of my opinions on the RBOCs.
Re:What the hell is the FCC Thinking? (Score:1, Flamebait)
I know I'm being tragically optimisitic, but...
Maybe they're living in a world where DSL uses privately owned wires -- as opposed to public radio spectrum broadcast all over the place -- therefore making DSL none of the FCC's fucking business.
(Not that this is real reason they're doing it. More likely, there was some well-aimed bribe.)
Re:What the hell is the FCC Thinking? (Score:3, Insightful)
Congress is giving away another public resource. (Score:2)
Later this month, the House of Representatives will vote on the hotly debated Tauzin-Dingell broadband deregulation bill, which would allow Bells to offer broadband data services regardless of whether they open their local phone networks to competition.
The Telecommunications Act of 1996 currently requires incumbents such as the Bells to prove that they have opened their historical local monopolies to competition before they offer any long-distance services.
FCC Commissioner Michael Copps, who opposed today's decision to publish the proposed rule, said he believed that the agency was going too far down the road toward setting competition policy.
"I fear we are out-driving the range of our headlights," Copps said. "We are not ready to go as far as this notice takes us."
So you see, the FCC has more than one opinion but they are being driven by pressure from Congress, specifically that Toe-Zan (might still be a democrat, it's hard to keep up with people who have no priciples) looser from right here in Louisana. So the cycle is comming to completion where a network built under government franchise protection and therefore public is being given to a few large private companies. I suppose that will make it easier for Toe-Zan to collect bribes as he knows where to go every year.
I should have seen it comming. The local Bell has used it's ownership of those lines to screw would be DSL providers all along. They have manipulated the process very well. They own the database of potential customers and use it to make telephone solicitations while failing to update the one they are forced to share with their competitors. It's funny how I was not available to have DSL when I moved less than a mile and had to kill my Telocity contract. Stranger still when I recieved a solicitation from BellSouth that it was available two weeks later, but Telocity could not sign me up. Finally, it became unavailable before the whole process could be gone through. So, no supprise they would push laws to obliterate those they have been ignoring for the last eight years.
Consequence: You ain't getting any. Large traditional publishers now own all broadband. Hollywood/TimeWarner own cable, the telcos own DSL and the traditional broadcasters (owned by GE, Westinghouse and Disney) own the airwaves. All of these intities have reasons to keep you from using the internet that should be obvious. Telcos wish to continue raping you per minute of conversation. Opinion control is the reason large companies are in broadcast, and they will not tollerate competition. Not being able to push crap through restricted channels would ruin more than Hollywood. Expect DHCP over all forms of connectivity, and worse forms of "intelligence" being added to networks. The internet is becoming a new form of comercial broadcast faster than I thought possible just two years ago.
Re:What the hell is the FCC Thinking? (Score:2)
What's intersting is that Qwest has been accused by my state this very morning of setting sweetheart deals with a small set of businesses. This is anti-competitive, but they want to have long distance and deregulated DSL. Do you think they'd allow competition then? A Qwest rep refused to comment on the case specifically but said since their competitors have acombined *17-20%* market share, that is proof of competition in the marketplace.
Whether these deregualtors know it or not they are subsidizing the big guys and setting up a future of fewer providers. In a few years after the industry has busted they'll ask for more subsidies (they are already) or declare ignorance as the company collapses around them.
DSL & WideBand (Score:1)
It took me a few minutes to realize that UWB has absolutely nothing to do with data communications at all. Sheesh
Re:DSL & WideBand (Score:1)
The real roadblock to ultrawideband (Score:1, Informative)
Supposedly, the US is mounting video cameras on soldiers' helmets that are transmitting along these frequencies and sending realtime data of the battlefield into the commanding officers' computers.
The US military will NOT give up this spectrum without a fight. We must lobby Congress to get this spectrum for the public, or be left even further behind than our European and Japanese friends. Think about it people: Snuff films for the military, or on-demand pr0n to my cell phone?
Re:The real roadblock to ultrawideband (Score:1)
RFI (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:RFI (Score:1)
So this is how I can get back at the dork who's racial epithets I keep picking up on my unshielded stereo cables? Cool!
NPR (Score:5, Informative)
Here's the audio file of the segment:
http://www.npr.org/ramfiles/me/20020214.me.07.r
A commentator on there seemed to think it would interfere with all sorts of things acting like a "layer of jelly" which the poor little GPS device could not operate through.
Safety (Score:2)
Cringely's UWB article is somewhat misinformed (Score:4, Informative)
First, comparing the two systems' measurement accuracy is apples and oranges. UWB might be usable as a point-to-point ranging source, sort of like a stud finder, but it only tells you how far a given object is from, say, your handheld transmitter. GPS, on the other hand, gives you a three-dimensional position fix anywhere on earth (as long as you can see a reasonable patch of the sky). The two are simply not measuring the same thing. (Furthermore, a properly set up variant of GPS called a "differential" setup can deliver accuracy of better that 1cm.)
Second, UWB is not necessarily as low-power a system as is claimed in the article. Typical UWB transmitter power levels are around 1 milliwatt (typical cell phones are around 1 watt), which is ten times higher than what Cringely claims. (The idea is that because the energy is spread across a wide swath of frequencies, the power in any one band is relatively low.) Furthermore, UWB power levels are strongly dependent on the desired distance between transmitter and receiver.
Third, applications are currently being developed for using GPS and its variants indoors.
Finally, UWB can pose problems for GPS. The nominal GPS signal is, by design, about 15dB below the ambient noise floor -- that is, it's about 30 times quieter than the static you'd receive if you tuned a radio between stations. Thus GPS can be particularly sensitive to even very low-level intereference. I work in a GPS Lab [stanford.edu] and we have been examining the potential UWB-GPS interference issues for about the past two years. The point is, this is a big deal because GPS will likely be used in a number of safety-critical applications (e.g. landing airplanes) within the next 5-10 years. Dismissing the potential objections to UWB out of hand is therefore not only ill-advised, but potentially dangerous.
The list of publications on the lab's main page includes papers with detailed explanations of the points I've made above.
-FP
Re:Cringely's UWB article is somewhat misinformed (Score:2)
The papers you cite (thanks!) seem to show that UWB interference with GPS signals is quite implementation-dependent. The "5-10 years" you mention seems like plenty of time for the people working on UWB and new GPS-based services to understand and deal with the interference issues, and indeed it appears that working groups have already been formed for exactly that purpose. Is there really that much cause for alarm here? Even if so, how fair would it be to blame UWB for effects on systems that weren't yet deployed when UWB was?
Higher freq==More bandwidth. (Score:2)
On the other hand, higher frequency means shorter broadcast distance, and gets impacted by things like rain fade.
Yous get nothing for nothing. ELF signals can go around the world, through water, etc but you're bandwidth constrained, 8kHz of bandwidth (voice) is a lot when you're transmitting between 1-300Hz.
Re:Higher freq==More bandwidth. (Score:2)
Re:Higher freq==More bandwidth. (Score:3, Informative)
Attribution (Score:2, Interesting)
No, it's a story from Reuters. The attribution is clearly given in the byline. This is a common mistake made by Slashdot article writers. Think about it a second: if I saw this article about UWB on Slashdot and posted to Kuro5hin "According to Slashdot..." my attribution would be flat wrong. It is the same with stories posted to Yahoo and other news outlets. The byline gives proper credit and should be cited as the source, not the news outlet where one happened to read the story.
Re:Attribution (Score:1)
Does this mean (Score:1)
Or are they just FUD?
Re:Does this mean (Score:1)
Reclassifying DSL (Score:2)
I certainly don't think that changing the current mess that is DSL into something else is necessarily bad and likely no worse than the current silliness.
Re:I dont think that UWB is what people think. (Score:1)
Why are GPS people worried? (Score:2)
So, why do people who use GPS care? Are they worried about accidental emission in the 1.2-1.6GHz band?
Re:Why are GPS people worried? (Score:1)
Good intro about UWB "Fact and Fictions" (Score:4, Informative)
In last week's EETimes, there was a good intro to UWB and its challenges, as well as a discussion about the (considerable) importance of the FCC ruling that just took place (in a front page story). The Web versions are:
FCC conspiracy (Score:2)
> interference is not an issue, so I wonder what
> their real agenda is?
3 choices:
1) government oppression of individual freedom.
2) government campaigning for something besides
3) government acting more powerful than Microsoft, oppressing individual freedom in the process.
This competes with Bluetooth, not cellular (Score:2)
This thing is way overhyped.
Wireless broadband? (Score:2)
MMDS providers seem to be having lots of porblems that might be technical or might be excessive cash burn rate. Its run in the 2.ish ghz range and is line of site using well known technology. Sprint had been offering it in places like Chicago but isn't any more [sprintbroadband.com]. From what I can tell MMDS is the lowest cost option right now and most of the others have never been rolled out or are still in the planning stages.
Some very small towns now have 802.11b systems but thats limited to a very small population and won't work for more than a few hundred people and they don't scale well.
homebrew UWB anyone? (Score:2)
lets ask the all knowing GOOGLE [google.com]
ARRL position (Score:2)
In fact, at some point, UWB will inevitably lead to interference. That is a simple fact of how radio works. The only question really is how much power and what UWB applications one can permit before UWB-related interference for non-UWB services becomes a real problem.
GPS Problems (Score:1)
I'm not saying don't learn the "needles"... just that an archaic technology like that needs to make way for GPS if general aviation is ever going to stand a chance. VOR's as a backup... cool. GPS is the way of the future and many aircraft are already equipped as such. Even commercial airliners use GPS, they come that way from the factory. I don't want to go back to dead-reckoning unless I have an electrical failure (kills my GPS) AND a vacuum failure (kills my VOR guages) simultaneously!
Just my 2c worth!