If the proposed addition of the 12GHz spectrum to 5G goes forward, Starlink broadband terminals across America could be crippled, or so SpaceX has complained.
The Elon Musk biz made the claim [PDF] this week in a filing to the FCC, which is considering allowing Dish to operate a 5G service in the 12GHz band (12.2-12.7GHz). This frequency range is also used by Starlink and others to provide over-the-air satellite internet connectivity.
SpaceX said its own in-house study, conducted in Las Vegas, showed "harmful interference from terrestrial mobile service to SpaceX's Starlink terminals … more than 77 percent of the time, resulting in full outages 74 percent of the time." It also claimed the interference will extend to a minimum of 13 miles from base stations. In other words, if Dish gets to use these frequencies in the US, it'll render nearby Starlink terminals useless through wireless interference, it was claimed.
The rocket maker criticized a 2021 study that was submitted in favor of Dish to the regulator by RS Access, a group focused on bringing the 12GHz spectrum to 5G in the US. RS Access worked closely with Dish Networks, which is trying to expand into 5G service using the 12GHz band.
"The key technical question before the [Federal Communications Commission] is whether 5G operations can coexist with non-geostationary satellite orbit Fixed-Satellite Service (NGSO FSS) and Direct Broadcast Satellite (DBS) licensees in the band," RS Access concluded [PDF] in its report to the FCC.
By that, it means Starlink is the NGSO FSS; and Dish, which offers satellite TV, cellular plans, and more, is the DBS. RS Access's argument is that these two should be able to work alongside each other.
"The commission does not face a binary choice to either do nothing or sacrifice DBS and NGSO services in the 12GHz band," RS Access wrote. SpaceX's filing has no immediate effect on the proposals, and a debate over the rollout is ongoing.
Starlink also noted RS Access's report found that "only tens of thousands of Americans, which RS Access deems as negligible," would be affected by Dish's 12GHz expansion. "Yet, as the vast majority of comments about this submission have noted, the analysis is riddled with errors and faulty assumptions," it added.
The 5G for 12GHz Coalition, which includes Dish, RS Access, VMWare, and others, and is working with the FCC to see the proposals through, noted in a statement that "after 18 months and both a robust comment and reply period," SpaceX has finally submitted its response to the plans.
"Our engineers and technical experts are reviewing the filing in depth and remain committed to working in good faith with the FCC and stakeholders to ensure that the American public is able to reap the immense benefits of 5G services in this band," the coalition said.
Interestingly enough, in April 2021, the FCC approved a request by SpaceX to modify its license for operating Starlink satellites, a change that could potentially cause interference in the 12GHz range. Dish and RS Access both objected to the decision, which they said would compromise their 5G plans for the spectrum.
In that ruling, the FCC said it wasn't going to hold up the licensing decision because of the 12GHz proceedings, and added a caveat: "We condition this grant, subject to any modification necessary to bring it into conformance with future actions in commission rulemakings, including but not limited to the 12GHz proceeding … Therefore, SpaceX proceeds at its own risk."
Starlink has a goal of providing internet to underserved locations, and by many accounts has done so. At the same time, thousands of Starlink satellites orbiting Earth are congesting the night sky so badly that AI models have been developed to help separate stars from Starlink kit blocking the view. ®
At The Linux Foundation's Open Source Summit in Austin, Texas on Tuesday, Linus Torvalds said he expects support for Rust code in the Linux kernel to be merged soon, possibly with the next release, 5.20.
At least since last December, when a patch added support for Rust as a second language for kernel code, the Linux community has been anticipating this transition, in the hope it leads to greater stability and security.
In a conversation with Dirk Hohndel, chief open source officer at Cardano, Torvalds said the patches to integrate Rust have not yet been merged because there's far more caution among Linux kernel maintainers than there was 30 years ago.
Qualcomm knows that if it wants developers to build and optimize AI applications across its portfolio of silicon, the Snapdragon giant needs to make the experience simpler and, ideally, better than what its rivals have been cooking up in the software stack department.
That's why on Wednesday the fabless chip designer introduced what it's calling the Qualcomm AI Stack, which aims to, among other things, let developers take AI models they've developed for one device type, let's say smartphones, and easily adapt them for another, like PCs. This stack is only for devices powered by Qualcomm's system-on-chips, be they in laptops, cellphones, car entertainment, or something else.
While Qualcomm is best known for its mobile Arm-based Snapdragon chips that power many Android phones, the chip house is hoping to grow into other markets, such as personal computers, the Internet of Things, and automotive. This expansion means Qualcomm is competing with the likes of Apple, Intel, Nvidia, AMD, and others, on a much larger battlefield.
The UBPorts community is in the final stages of preparing its next release and it's calling for testers.
OTA-23 is getting close – the project's Github kanban looks quite good to us – and if you're lucky enough to have one of the project's supported devices lying around, then you can help.
Many of them are a few years old now, so there's a good chance that you've already replaced them and they sit unloved and neglected in a drawer. The starred entries in the list of devices are the best supported and should have no show-stopping problems. In order of seniority, that means: the LG-made Google Nexus 5 (2013); the original Oneplus One (2014); two models of Sony Xperia X, the F5121 and F5122 (2016); and Google's Pixel 3a and 3a XL (2019).
Lenovo has unveiled a small desktop workstation in a new physical format that's smaller than previous compact designs, but which it claims still has the type of performance professional users require.
Available from the end of this month, the ThinkStation P360 Ultra comes in a chassis that is less than 4 liters in total volume, but packs in 12th Gen Intel Core processors – that's the latest Alder Lake generation with up to 16 cores, but not the Xeon chips that we would expect to see in a workstation – and an Nvidia RTX A5000 GPU.
Other specifications include up to 128GB of DDR5 memory, two PCIe 4.0 slots, up to 8TB of storage using plug-in M.2 cards, plus dual Ethernet and Thunderbolt 4 ports, and support for up to eight displays, the latter of which will please many professional users. Pricing is expected to start at $1,299 in the US.
A totaled Tesla Model S burst into flames in a Sacramento junkyard earlier this month, causing a fire that took "a significant amount of time, water, and thinking outside the box to extinguish," firefighters said.
The vehicle was involved in a comparably unexplosive accident that sent it to the junkyard three weeks ago – it's unclear what caused the Tesla to explode nearly a month after being taken off the road. Like other electric vehicle fires, it was very difficult to extinguish.
"Crews knocked the fire down, but the car kept re-igniting and off-gassing in the battery compartment," the department said on Instagram.
Oracle has slimmed down its on-prem fully managed cloud offer to a smaller datacenter footprint for a sixth of the budget.
Snappily dubbed OCI Dedicated Region Cloud@Customer, the service was launched in 2020 and promised to run a private cloud inside a customer's datacenter, or one run by a third party. Paid for "as-a-service," the concept promised customers the flexibility of moving workloads seamlessly between the on-prem system and Oracle's public cloud for a $6 million annual fee and a minimum commitment of three years.
Big Red has now slashed the fee for a scaled-down version of its on-prem cloud to $1 million a year for a minimum period of four years.
Matt Ramberg is the vice president of information security at Sanmina, a sprawling electronics manufacturer with close to 60 facilities in 20 countries on six continents and some 35,000 employees spread across the world.
Like most enterprises, Sanmina, a big name in contract manufacturing, is also adapting to a new IT environment. The 42-year-old Fortune 500 company, with fiscal year 2021 revenue of more than $6.76 billion, was an early and enthusiastic adopter of the cloud, taking its first step into Google Cloud in 2009.
With manufacturing sites around the globe, it also is seeing its technology demands stretch out to the edge.
It's been a good week for free speech advocates as a judge ruled that copyright law cannot be used to circumvent First Amendment anonymity protections.
The decision from the US District Court for the Northern District of California overturns a previous ruling that compelled Twitter to unmask an anonymous user accused of violating the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), which filed a joint amicus brief with the ACLU in support of Twitter's position, said the ruling confirms "that copyright holders issuing subpoenas under the DMCA must still meet the Constitution's test before identifying anonymous speakers."
One of the longest-lived GUI operating systems in the world has its origins as an emergency project – specifically the means by which Acorn planned to rescue the original Archimedes operating system.
This is according to the original Acorn Arthur project lead, Paul Fellows, who spoke about the creation of RISC OS at the RISC OS User Group Of London, ROUGOL [after some helpful arrangements made by Liam Proven – Ed].
On Monday, your correspondent hosted and moderated a reunion of four of the original developers of Acorn's RISC OS.
In the latest episode of Black Mirror, a vast megacorp sells AI software that learns to mimic the voice of a deceased woman whose husband sits weeping over a smart speaker, listening to her dulcet tones.
Only joking – it's Amazon, and this is real life. The experimental feature of the company's virtual assistant, Alexa, was announced at an Amazon conference in Las Vegas on Wednesday.
Rohit Prasad, head scientist for Alexa AI, described the tech as a means to build trust between human and machine, enabling Alexa to "make the memories last" when "so many of us have lost someone we love" during the pandemic.
Toshiba has received 10 potential offers for the company, eight of which would take the company private, while two would allow it to remain publicly listed, according to reports.
Toshiba shares are said to have risen as much as 6.5 percent following the news, with some estimates valuing the deals at up to $22 billion.
The Japanese conglomerate announced in April that it was considering proposals to take the company private following numerous scandals and pressure from investor groups.
The Register - Independent news and views for the tech community. Part of Situation Publishing
Biting the hand that feeds IT © 1998–2022