Please educate me... yes, please do that.
This isn't chicken little. It's a serious tradeoff that the powers who be must make.
If LS is allowed to carry out their plan, the country will get more cell phone and gadget coverage. It will be a while, but supposedly LS will bring it to the hinterlands (yeah, right).
The cost will be loss of general dependence on GPS. Testing has demonstrated the degree of the problem. The military may be able to keep operating but with degradation in areas near the LS towers. Aviation will have to scrap years of planning and spend billions on other navigation technology. Communication networks will have to convert to other ways to synchronize network timing. Drivers will find GPS unreliable or unusable in many areas. Precision surveying will be out the window within many miles of any LS tower.
The filtering "fix" that LS says GPS makers should implement will most likely not be a retrofit, and may not even be feasible at affordable cost in new equipment.
The whole problem is that LS is trying to use Satellite bands for high powered ground transmitters. That this creates problems should have been obvious to the FCC.
I think for small boundary surveys, loss of GNSS would not be as big of impact, especially if you operate in a heavily treed area. For large PLSS retracement surveys, yes it will impact business, BUT we did those years ago, so without GNSS they could still be done.
There are other tasks which would essentially be severely curtailed or impossible without some sort of positioning that does not rely on line of sight. I operate in the aerial data acquisition / mapping and GIS arena, my business would be greatly impacted.
GNSS is tightly integrated into almost ALL aerial data missions these days, projects that would not of been conceived of prior to the digital revolution are done routinely now, many projects are reflown for updates every 36 months or so, primarily because the cost of acquisition and control make it economical to do so. Some acquisition such as mobile LiDAR, both ground and aerial would cease to exist without GNSS since the moving sensor is positioned with GNSS.
Some of these tasks could conceivably still be done with much more personnel on the ground and much more time expended, while that might seem to be good for those in the surveying field, I think the opposite effect would happen, projects simply would not be done due to the time and cost involved. I think technology can't march back in time, we need GNSS or the next greatest thing, stepping back 20-30 years in time isn't probably going to be good for the surveying profession.
SHG
Please educate me... yes, please do that.
Agreed! I read an article in the last month where one of the TV satellite companies (Dish or Direct TV) also own space to ground bandwidth from some defunct company, they want to do the same as LSQ (except they saw it is far enough away from GPS to not affect it, ha), once the FCC starts down that slippery slope it won't be good AND they already did start with LSQ.
SHG
LSQ latest proposal claims it would NOT affect 99.5% of the receivers in existence, what that really means is that ONLY high precision receivers used for guiding heavy equipment, real time networks, scientific monitoring, surveying, etc. would be affected, in other words ALL of the uses where high accuracy and precision are needed and also the most expensive receivers.
At this time, the so called filters DO NOT exist and it is unclear if the technology even exists to build said filters. At worst you would probably need a new receiver, at worst high precision receivers will cease to exist and no amount of money will fix the situation.
SHG
One man crews are inherently unsafe. In the conditions in which surveyors work, we need a lookout, wingman, road dog or whatever. I've worked alone, as we all have, but it's dumb.
Don
Personally I think it will only impact boundary work in forcing us to move back to conventional total stations.
However it will impact greatly the agriculture (precise farming), aviation safety and most importantly E911 systems.
I have a lot of experience in moving over radio systems to the newer trunking systems and in the timing involved in both E911 transmissions and locations. All use the precise timing of the NAVSTAR system and all NEED that timing to operate correctly.
And degradation will impact the timing used to separate emergency radio transmissions and the ability to correctly pass a lat/long from a roving cell to ani/ali E911 systems. The E in 911 is for enhanced and this has been 20 years in the making. All current cell phones are GPS capable, even if you don't know it. As part of any packet it sends it includes location information. This with Light Squared can be degraded or interrupted completely. To me the E911 is the most troubling since it's most important in urban settings which is where the first towers will be deployed creating an instant problem.
My opinion is the band width that LS acquired was NEVER intended to include terrestrial high powered transmitters. If LS only use satellites then I doubt we would have any problems between the systems. Someone sold us out at the FCC and from the news it's looks like it's starting to run deep on who is involved in yet another big money scandal for favor.
Neil ---
I hear what your saying - On every point.
The thing is, I've been witness to surveys that were conducted 80 years ago, done with a precision that 99% of the surveyors today could not replicate with the instrumentation that were used back then.
Today's surveyor's are a bunch of candy a$$ed button pushers, that want to stay warm, dry and their only complaint is about low pdop.
Most of today's surveyors would crap if they where told to clear line through briars, and would look at you strange if you told them to break chain.
The good ole' days are gone and has been replaced with monkeys
I KNOW NOTHING!
That said: I believe that if GPS is "blocked". (That's the plan all along)
All of the sudden there will be a subscription service, very affordable, and EVERY GPS USER will pay a little (it all adds up).
Every GPS device will have to pay to play. Surveyors, hikers, drivers, everyone will pay a few cents to LS, or whoever, to use "their" bandwidths.
🙁
Neil ---
> I hear what your saying - On every point.
>
> The thing is, I've been witness to surveys that were conducted 80 years ago, done with a precision that 99% of the surveyors today could not replicate with the instrumentation that were used back then.
>
> Today's surveyor's are a bunch of candy a$$ed button pushers, that want to stay warm, dry and their only complaint is about low pdop.
>
> Most of today's surveyors would crap if they where told to clear line through briars, and would look at you strange if you told them to break chain.
>
> The good ole' days are gone and has been replaced with monkeys
I think that is hilarious. Yesterday, my grandfather turned 78. He turned 18 on a Saturday and started his job as a surveyor on Monday. Started as a chainman/brush cutter for the state dot in 1951!!! That is 60 years of surveying experience for one man. Pretty much everything I know about surveying (and life) came from him. Now in my short time, I have added a bit more to that but I still have a great appreciation for the way he started surveying and the ways and methods of surveying procedures in the 50's, 60's, and 70's.
I don't believe there is any technical way for their phone/internet service to operate and selectively enable or disable GPS users who pay a fee. Also, their spectrum band they want to put their transmitters in does not overlap with GPS, so they would have no claim on GPS spectrum and no claim to fees from GPS users.
The problem is adjacent channel interference. When an adjacent band signal is a billion times stronger than the one you want to receive because the transmitter is very close by, it is technically difficult and therefore expensive to build a receiver that does it right. Under the rules that existed, the band LS is licensed for was only for satellite transmitters, so their signal would also be weak and GPS would have no difficulty ignoring it. Changing the rules to allow powerful ground transmitters is what creates the problem.
And yet Phil, the LSQ guy says every time that he opens his mouth that this has been in the works for years, all the opposition just came since 2010 when all of his competitors complained. Is he really that uneducated about the technical issues his proposed plan creates when moving from space to ground transmissions? If he wanted to implement his BB plan from space ONLY in an adjacent frequency to GPS, everybody would be happy, BUT him, since that will cost a lot more. The guy distorts the truth way more than all of his opposition.
A lot of talking about filters, yada yada, some interviewer needs to ask him if it didn't change the game totally when they asked to repurpose space to ground spectrum for ground to ground spectrum. I have not heard anyone put him on the spot for that in any articles or interviews, maybe I just missed it. He always mentions this has been going on a long time, it wasn't until 2010 that they met with opposition, duh!
In yesterday's interview he says they have budgeted $50M to develop filters, really! That is just a drop in the bucket of the amount that is probably going to be required, and that assumes such filters could even be built.
SHG
We are heavily invested in machine control and GPS is only one of the guidance systems. Lasers, sonic tracers, and Robotic total stations also guide machines. Also, not all Machine control has auto controls either and 95% of operators you see on a tractor equipped with machine control are the best operators on the job without the help, it just makes them much more efficient. Thats like saying all surveyors forgot how to measure because of the EDM or turn angles because of robotic total stations.....
Billionaire Backer Disputes Charges That Company Sought Whit
More on the LightSquared Issue
Take GPS out of the equation...
...and insert work truck.
So, say a company swings a deal with the government that renders work trucks and other automobiles unuseable.
You would still be able to complete that survey...via horseback or donkey.
No problem right?
As noted above by others, it is not just surveyor's (and or construction) that depend on GPS for their business. Many different companies would be at a loss, and our national defense would suffer.
