Posted on 09/18/2011 1:03:54 PM PDT by Clairity
Earlier this week there was the case of Solyndra, the hi-tech solar panel manufacturer that went bust last month, despite receiving more than $500m in federal loan guarantees. Yesterday it was the turn of LightSquared, mired controversy over its use of satellite frequencies for a national 4G mobile network, which critics say could disrupt the Global Positioning System (GPS) that operates millions of navigation devices, including those used by the US military and for hurricane and tornado tracking.
LightSquared's plans have been opposed by GPS users, including an industry group named Coalition to Save Our GPS, whose members include consumer GPS navigation makers Garmin and Magellan as well as the Fire Department of New York, airlines and others.
According to the coalition:
LightSquared plans to transmit ground-based radio signals that would be one billion or more times more powerful as received on earth than GPS's low-powered satellite-based signals, potentially causing severe interference impacting millions of GPS receivers – including those used by the federal agencies, state and local governments, first responders, airlines, mariners, civil engineering, construction and surveying, agriculture, and everyday consumers in their cars and on handheld devices.
Part of the controversy involves its potential interference with GPS use by the US military. The Daily Beast reported claims by Republicans in Congress that the administration sought to modify the testimony of US air force general William Shelton on the subject.
(Excerpt) Read more at guardian.co.uk ...
Anything going to and from the satellite will have some lag problem, but it shouldn’t be too bad. Considering that you are “off the grid”, I would suggest trying it, they should give you some 30 day tryout or so, before you sign a long term contract or maybe there is no long term contract.
Well, The Guardian is not exactly a conservative mouthpiece. I think some of these things are starting to accumulate. And I’m sure that, with the shear size of the honey pot Obama had with green Stimulus money, these are just the beginnings of the scandals.
I do not think they (L2) have settled the technological issues yet, from what I read.
Also, it is affecting more than GPS, there is 400Mhz of govt. owned spectrum that is affected. One of them is USN weather satellites.
How do retune a frequency while in polar orbit?
Wildblue (or Hughes) pay through the nose and get so so service. Any sat. service enforces their fair use policy. And regardless even if you pay for a higher band width you are going to slow down during peak times. In fact you will probably be lucky to get half the speed you are paying for on a consistent basis. (can you tell I’m not impressed with the contract I signed?) I actually checked my usage before leaving for a week, disconnected all cables to insure absolutely no usage for about 8 days, came back and the drop was really really small. But since I cannot get DSL out here I am stuck with this.
I can get 3g through my phones hot spot and that is faster then my land line, and even sometimes faster then my sat. but i have noticed a slow down in that to. I suppose as more people get their smart phones every thing will slow down, hey maybe my land line will be the better option someday since everything seems to be slowing down. LOL
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