Weather forecasters are STILL banging on about 5G clashing with their sensors. As if climate change is a big deal The weather forecasters responsible for letting millions knowing about weather patterns, including hurricanes and tornadoes, have warned yet again that plans to auction off radio spectrum for 5G mobile networks could have a dangerous impact on their efforts. The American Geophysical Union (AGU), American Meteorological Society …
what they are worried about is the spectrum for things like Doppler radar
you know those images that take up the most internet bandwidth on the internet excluding pornography
the problem is that the weather people are frankly useless at making their case because some of it is not really proven and the FCC is calling their bluff
personally I would like a real study conducted into the interference and how the weather radar could be improved with the spectrum rather than using the old "its not broken please do not fix it"
the FCC needs to harmonise with the rest of the world and should worry when NOAA etc turn up at their door
I'm genuinely curious, why not just replace the existing transmission system with a cellular 4G/5G system, at the network's cost. The networks get some early adopters to test their system, and the weathermen get their data. It seems obvious enough that I assume there's some fatal flaw in this plan.... any ideas?
As far as I understand, this has not been explained correctly in the article. Weather satellites detect the presence of water vapour (and other atmospheric gases) by firing microwave signals downwards and detecting what comes back up. Water vapour absorbs radiation at around the frequency of the proposed 5G frequencies (I believe), which is why ground based emissions at the same frequency will completely screw these observations (obviously the signal power reflected back to the satellite is tiny, so the 5G signal would swamp any observation).
Satellite observation is by many orders of magnitude the most useful input to a weather forecast, and removing this observation type, would have a significant decremental effect on the accuracy of the forecast.
^^^ This. (Although there is some consideration for satellite downlinks as well) It's all about being able to sense the presence of water vapour in the air.
The EU has already set limits for how much a 5G transmitter can leak into the 23.6-24GHz band that is used by weather sats, of -42 dB*. Last I heard, the FCC was proposing limits of about -30dB, which is quite a lot less limiting, and definitely has the potential to fuck up weather forecasting.
* The precise restrictions are: "−42 dBW/200 MHz for 5G Base Stations and −38 dBW/200MHz for 5G User Equipment" taken from section 5.4 here.
Addendum, as I finish writing that comment, I finally found this document that spells out the limits that various different regulatory bodies are planning to place on unwanted emissions (UE) into the 23.6-24GHz band, and it looks like the EU is being much more strict than pretty much everywhere else on the planet, and the US is most lax:
African Telecommunications Union -28 to -30 dB
Arab Spectrum Management Group - 28 dB
European Conference of Postal and Telecommunications -42dB
US FCC -20dB
Asia-Pacific Telecommunity -29.7 dB
Most of these seem to be proposed limits, not set in stone yet, but it's worth noting that the Asia-Pacific Telecommunity includes most of the countries where 5G modems will actually be made.
You may not even change the frequencies. If you use specific frequencies because a given substance absorbs or reflect them in a way that delivers quantitative data, you can't simply use others.
I'm starting to think the telco obsession about 5G has the same rationale, though, they want to observe and measure our behaviours wherever we are, and sell those data.
Maybe then tornado warnings will come when mobes in the pockets of people will start to deliver data that they are spinning wildly....
The letter (link in article) sent to the FCC explains it in the opening paragraphs: they have satellites that use the 1675-1680 MHz band for space-to-earth transmission and terrestial sensors with receive-only antennas that will be operational until at least the 2030s.
One can only conclude that vested interests in the US are seeking to knobble data collection so that they can claim there is no evidence of climate change etc. because the scientists have no data...
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>Yes, it's totally useless. Like stocking frames and the spinning jenny. Fucking 'progress'.
Hmm, yeah progress like carcinogenic pesticides, nuclear waste, Facebook etc. Not all "progress" is beneficial to mankind but is just there to sell "stuff" and generate profit while having a negative impact on mankind or just be plain fucking useless.
...have sent letters to US comms watchdog the FCC asking it [PDF] to scale back or stop plans to auction off 5G spectrum to cellular operators because it will likely interfere with their systems...
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...the FCC wants to sell off, at vast profit...
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Almost impossible to predict the outcome.
Why is there such a push on 5G?
4G is amply good enough. In a decent coverage area, 4G will consistently give greater bandwidth than the average UK home broadband connection. Enough even for 4K kitten videos! Why on earth do the government seem to think we need a new 5G network, instead of perhaps just expanding the 4G one?
Being able to pluck a few hundre megabit out of the air is a lot cheaper than having to lay proper telecoms infrastructure to remote homes and businesses. In one fell swoop at least the UK govt can hit their target of having "super fast broadband" available to the whole UK population by allowing mobile co's to put up a few more masts and sell 5G routers as static internet connections.
Most likely, but specific testimony in this case wouldn't be about European networks, since FCC rulemaking and bandwidth allocation has nothing to do with Europe.
Assuming 5G uses the same spectrum world 'round, EUMETSAT's Meteosat family have downlink frequencies in the same place as NOAA's satellites (in the frequency band under discussion or immediately adjacent), used for the same reasons. So same problem as NOAA's rightfully complaining about.
Not just weather sats, though: all current satellite navigation systems use adjacent frequencies in this same frequency band, so if 5G gets deployed big expect GPS/GALILEO/GLONASS to get harder to use or slower to lock.
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