• Animats 4 hours ago

    This is up at 17 GHz. It's not the attempt to take over the 900MHz ISM band.

    • exabrial 3 hours ago

      Same.

      There's plenty of spectrum available. For purchase. Contact T-Mobile or Verizon.

      • blackeyeblitzar 2 hours ago

        Maybe there is a way to force them to release unused spectrum for free?

        • moralestapia an hour ago

          Or force regular auctions on them.

          (Maybe this is already the case, idk)

      • pockybum522 3 hours ago

        I about had a heart attack before I clicked on it and realized that.

        • m3kw9 2 hours ago

          Wait until Apple puts 17ghz receivers in their iPhones

          • lxgr 12 minutes ago

            They already have 30 GHz hardware (for 5G mmwave)!

            I don’t think either spectrum will be feasible for direct to cell satellite communication in the short term, though.

            • Molitor5901 an hour ago

              Is that feasible in an iPhone? Could an iPhone with just one more radio become a sat phone?

              • RockRobotRock an hour ago

                They can already send texts over satellite so probably pretty feasible. Idk though

          • forgot-im-old an hour ago

            Starlink already uses these frequencies (17 GHz) for uplink (user to sat). Now they are also allowed for downlink.

            Starlink user terminals are half duplex (Tx and Rx at different times) and so could easily support 17GHz DL in a new version. But the satellite is necessarily full duplex (propagation delays differ across users so sat needs to Tx and Rx at overlapping times). Starlink's satellites would seem unlikely to be able to handle their own tx self desense (self jamming) if they used these new frequencies.

            Probably a win for Kuiper, but not Starlink.

            Not surprising given the current administration opposes some of Starlink's "questionable" objectives. https://www.reddit.com/r/EnoughMuskSpam/comments/1eu994l/mus...

          • rkagerer 24 minutes ago

            Was this always in the works, or has recent 'competition' pushed them to speed up unlocking this bandwidth? (e.g. Apple's Emergency SOS, Starlink Direct to Cell, etc)

          • yieldcrv 7 minutes ago

            Nice, the CBRS spectrum and municipal auctions were a big success in opening up new markets

            I like this narrower approach the FCC is taking

            • idunnoman1222 3 hours ago

              The KU band is already used by satellites, A tweet discussing what this actually means would be more useful than this fcc.gov page