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Comment by Negitivefrags | Hacker News Reader

Is this even actually directly related to 5G? I mean a mobile phone can’t connect directly to space satellite right?

The article says “Would allow telecom companies to deploy 5G networks”. Is this satellite network for doing connnections between cell sites maybe?

If that’s the case, it feels like 5G is only tangentially related and only included in story for click bait given that people seem to want to get mad about 5G recently.

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Ligado (ex-lightsquare) product is a hybrid satellite terrestrial network. The specific component that people are concerned about is their terrestrial network which is very much a 5G creature (in so much at Ligado is marketing themselves and this approval as a step forward for 5G and IoT).

It's not a 5G issue, it's a spectrum allocation issue.

Fundamentally yes, but look at how both sides are trying to sell the issue. If Ligado and the FCC are both pushing this spectrum allocation issue as a question of helping 5G or not (and therefore hitching onto the we need 5G now or else China will beat us wagon), then I'm completely sympathetic to opposing coverage piling on the counter 5G bandwagon.

The counter 5G bandwagon seems to be largely comprised of conspiracy theories, dubious health claims, and unqualified assertions that people don't want more bandwidth. Why would you poison a legitimately important topic like spectrum allocation with associations like that?

Personally, I dislike how the conspiracy nonsense has kind of covered up the actual criticisms of 5g that existed prior to suddenly everyone thinking it's a great idea and if you don't, you're a conspiracy theorist.

I seem to recall this revolved around, questionable tangible benefits vs cost of deployment, poor penetration of 5g signals through structures, a lack of devices or internet plans to take advantage of 5g, and some other things that just seem to have taken a back seat to all the bullshit.

One has to wonder if some of the nonsense criticisms of 5G (causes disease, government conspiracy, etc) have been deliberately amplified to drown out legitimate technical concerns.

Bingo...

This is a genuine problem: the current polarization means that you are either in favor of 5G or a conspiracy theorist. This is not a healthy atmosphere for a rational discussion about long-term impact of 5G.

I was under the impression that there are serious non-conspiracy concerns about the impact of 5G networking on weather satellits [0]. Something along the lines of "they use a frequency in the range used by 5G in order to see water vapor".

[0] https://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/infrastructure/a...

Yes. Another source: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-03609-x

Indeed, the issue here is a company, Ligado, that plans to use the L-band spectrum.

As this is the part of the spectrum that GPS uses, the Pentagon worries about interferences.

This has nothing to do with 5G, the cellular standard, per se, and even even less with Huawei or China.

Edit:

In fact, cellular networks like 4G and 5G ones rely on GPS for correct synchronisation and interfering with GPS could have an impact on them. Just to illustrates that this is a really a spectrum allocation issue regarding potential interferences, this is not a 5G issue.

You're right, although Ligado's intent seems to be to develop 5G networks on this piece of spectrum.

It doesn't have much relation to the current 5G ecosystem however.

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