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Comment by AnotherGoodName | Hacker News Reader

I honestly just figured it was spectrum licensing. You can’t sell devices that can broadcast at power on just any old frequency. At a hardware level these modems are capable of going well outside the bounds of mobile device regulations. See all the ‘turn xyz into a software defined radio’ hacks that have been done before on other devices on the market.

So the firmware is locked down. To do otherwise will break spectrum licensing as the device then becomes capable of doing things outside the original licensed purpose.

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That's probably it, the FCC won't let you sell a device that has a user-accessible method to violate wireless regulations. At most, they could release the source code but not the signing keys so end-users could inspect but not change the firmware.

Wouldn't the FCC come into play at a later level? We're talking about providing source code to device developers, not end users. As long as the device developers ensure the products they release are locked down, the FCC shouldn't care about it - they only look at the final product as sold to end users.

Both the modem module and the device incorporating the modem module have to be FCC licensed. When I said "FCC won't let you sell a device that has a user-accessible method to violate wireless regulations", I was referring to the modem company selling the modem module to device developers. Sorry for being unclear there.

I'm not too keen on this topic, but router firmware usually asked YOU, what country you (it, the router) resides in to allow or block additional frequencies. No source required.

And then Intel still goes and makes their "automatic geolocation for frequency policy based on neighboring APs" mechanism the default and only policy in their wireless Wi-Fi drivers.

I assume that you're outside of US. Outside of professional FCC-licensed-per-AP equipment, no, you cannot. There is a reason why OpenWRT has a weird limitation on some routers where an EU model is perfectly okay while simultaneously not working with a US model.

> So the firmware is locked down. To do otherwise will break spectrum licensing as the device then becomes capable of doing things outside the original licensed purpose.

So what. Take pretty much any older transceiver, swap out the quartz(es) and suddenly what used to be a ham radio can now communicate with police radios, or a commercial radio can be converted for ham use.

Yes, of course the former case is illegal and the latter legal as long as you don't transmit without a callsign and a ham license. But still, radio manufacturers were not required to stop people from doing such mods - to the contrary, up until the 90s it was commonplace to have detailed schematics and BOMs in radios, and it was just as commonplace for people to mod their radios.

I don't get why the FCC is putting up so much pressure on locking down devices ffs.

The FCC generally requires finished devices aimed at the commercial market to be locked down from arbitrary modification. See 47 CFR 15.212(a)(2)(iv) ( https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-47/part-15#p-15.212(a)(2)... ) As far as I can tell, that basically applies to any transmitter intended for market use.

You have a similar requirement for DFS handling on 5-7Ghz wifi as well, specifically for radar detection and transmission disable when an operating radar is detected: 47 CFR 15.407(i)(1) ( https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-47/part-15#p-15.407(i)(1) ) -- This version of the requirement is what triggered the wifi aps lockdown issues back in 2016.

The communicated view of the FCC is generally that devices that easily permit operation outside the 'licensed boundaries' essentially become radio nuisances. A plurality of vendors will then essentially act aggressively to lock down their devices. If they don't, the FCC will and has leveraged the FTC to prevent import and impound shipping of such devices. Some other nations do something similar as well.

All that is probably ripe for a Chevron challenge, but even if you have a case that could win in court, taking the FCC to court is fraught, at best. It's definitely not for the faint of heart. In the case of big companies and vendors, where most of the IP for 4G/LTE/5G lives anyway, it would be pretty strictly a commercial mistake to pick that fight.

As for the political reasons they do it, it boils down to funding and the political fights that produced the system of auctioned spectrum and gatekept spectrum we have today. Tearing some of that system down is more likely to succeed. I have no idea what the second and third order effects of that would be though.

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