FCC Official Asks Agency To Investigate Ban On Journalists' Wi-Fi Personal Hotspots At Debate (arstechnica.com) 176
Yesterday, it was reported that journalists attending the presidential debate at Hofstra University were banned from using personal hotspots and were told they had to pay $200 to access the event's Wi-Fi. The journalists were reportedly offered the option to either turn off their personal hotspots or leave the debate. Cyrus Farivar via Ars Technica is now reporting that "one of the members of the Federal Communications Commission, Jessica Rosenworcel, has asked the agency to investigate the Monday evening ban." Ars Technica reports: Earlier, Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel tweeted, saying that something was "not right" with what Hofstra did. She cited an August 2015 order from the FCC, forcing a company called SmartCity to no longer engage in Wi-Fi blocking and to pay $750,000. Ars has since updated their report with a statement from Karla Schuster, a spokeswoman for Hofstra University: The Commission on Presidential Debates sets the criteria for services and requires that a completely separate network from the University's network be built to support the media and journalists. This is necessary due to the volume of Wi-Fi activity and the need to avoid interference. The Rate Card fee of $200 for Wi-Fi access is to help defray the costs and the charge for the service does not cover the cost of the buildout. For Wi-Fi to perform optimally the system must be tuned with each access point and antenna. When other Wi-Fi access points are placed within the environment the result is poorer service for all. To avoid unauthorized access points that could interfere, anyone who has a device that emits RF frequency must register the device. Whenever a RF-emitting device was located, the technician notified the individual to visit the RF desk located in the Hall. The CPD RF engineer would determine if the device could broadcast without interference.
i.e. I think I can ignore the law if I want to (Score:3, Insightful)
Of course given that's the basis on which the USA came into existence in the first place, maybe we shouldn't be surprised if people are still offering that sort of justification... ;)
Re:i.e. I think I can ignore the law if I want to (Score:5, Insightful)
The law bans active jamming of Wifi signals. That is not what Hofstra did. They just made a policy announcement. That is not the same thing at all.
Should it be illegal for movie theaters to have cellphone bans? How is this different?
Re:i.e. I think I can ignore the law if I want to (Score:4, Insightful)
How is this different?
Only the FCC can regulate the airwaves, much like only the FAA can regulate the navigable skies.
Now, this idea of it being physical trespassing if somebody doesn't comply is interesting, but this has come up before, such as what happened here [slashdot.org].
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"Only the FCC can regulate the airwaves, much like only the FAA can regulate the navigable skies."
Define 'regulate'. You mean send men with guns when someone does what is not allowed?
Of do you mean escorting a user to the 'RF Desk' to agree to stop doing what is not to be tolerated?
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Sure they can. Ejecting the media because they want to use their hotspots instead of buying a $200 ticket to cover the First 2016 Presidential Debate might, to some seem questionable, for a variety of reasons. Like keeping the bloggers out.
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Should it be illegal for movie theaters to have cellphone bans? How is this different?
It seems different because they said you can't use your own thing, you have to pay us $200 to use ours, rather than x is banned.
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Re: LTE-U (Score:3)
Re: LTE-U (Score:4, Informative)
THIS!
You cannot emit RF to jam signals on your property, but finding an RF emitter and ejecting it (along with the owner) from the premises is permitted. You get bonus points for spelling out these terms in a signed contract too...
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Signed contracts are so 80s. These days you shrink-wrap contracts, or in this case you just put it on the back of the ticket or in the T&C you have to click through to obtain a ticket.
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Nah, just put it on the back of the ticket, should be enough. If they buy a ticket and then find out they cannot comply with the rules, sucks to be them.
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SneakerJamming.
It really doesn't matter whether you broadcast RF interference to deny a user's hotspot, or escort them to the 'RF Desk' to be told they will be removed from the venue if they do not comply.
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I would. Law enforcement is notorious for having crappy security themselves, twice so on their snooping devices. You can learn so many interesting things from them.
Not from law enforcement, from their toys! You thought "if you don't know who controls your device, it ain't you" only applies to Windows 10?
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Um, the French and Indian War was between 1756 and 1763. There was no "Canada", save as a bit of a colloquial expression for the New France, which became British after the defeat of French forces in 1759.
You might note that the American War of Independence didn't begin until 1775, and "Canada" didn't become a formal name until 1791 when the former territories of New France were carved into Upper Canada, where many Empire Loyalists were settling, and Lower Canada, where the Quebecois were dominant, and these
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Um, the French and Indian War was between 1756 and 1763. There was no "Canada", save as a bit of a colloquial expression for the New France, which became British after the defeat of French forces in 1759.
Nitpick: The Treaty of Paris was signed in 1763. That was when the colony formally became British.
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True. Much of that territory became Massachusetts. Then Maine.
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Smugglers might not have been so
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The Founding Fathers were not only fighting the system but they were actually fighting a system propping up corporations?
They were *gasp* socialists?
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Long story short, don't be so hard on corporations in general (some specif
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Like it would have mattered (Score:3)
When you have a large group of people sucking data on their cell phones in an area where they don't usually congregate, it's likely NOBODY will get ANY data to start with. Cell phone networks are usually provisioned for "just enough" capacity under normal circumstances and where they sometimes build in extra capacity in places where large crowds tend to gather regularly, they usually dump the bandwidth available to data into carrying voice as the crowd grows.
So... Even if you had turned on your cell data, it's unlikely to have been very useful once the crowd started to show up and post on their facebook and twitter feeds.
So, pay up if you want WiFi that's going to work you fools.
Re:Like it would have mattered (Score:4, Interesting)
you underestimate the free or low cost tenant agreements mobile providers are given by the universities. on my little podunk state-funded school, we had 8 base stations per building to ensure sufficient coverage. they would provide additional mobile base stations for larger activities such as graduation. you know the one commonality all these devices shared? a fiber connection back to a switch in a room they controlled and an rj45 that came out which we gladly provided free bandwidth on our (then) internet2 backhaul. 2 hops and they were directly on the federal and education funded backbone (of the time).
this was over 10 years ago. i'm pretty sure they (the mobile carriers) can handle the large^H^H^H^H^H relatively small gathering of people using data.
-dk
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Which takes time and $$ to do. So what's in it for the Cell company? Not much, unless the venue offers to pay for the increased service, which, if I could venture a guess, isn't high on the "need to spend money on this" list, given that this was a one time thing. Plus, it can be a *real* headache to try and add coverage for a few thousand handsets without making trouble for yourself by putting the cells to close together where they overlap too much and cause a bunch of thrashing as phones keep switching c
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For a presidential debate that lasts only a few hours, I imagine the big 3 would gladly roll in a 4G-LTE COWs that can handle a few hundred journalists gratis. No service provider wants to get the reputation with journalists that they are unreliable for a big story like this. That would be death by a thousand small cuts of ink (and you never want to make enemies with someone who buys ink by the barrel)...
For 5K joe-averages at generic-medium sized entertainment venue, well, one COW won't do it anyhow, an
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I don't have a link for the specific article, but Washington University reported that they would have 8 portable cell towers in operation to supplement the usual service ( https://debate.wustl.edu/ [wustl.edu] ). That compares to the 1992 debate, when they had the phone company install 3500 temporary phone lines and converted athletic building showers into film developing cubicles [1]
sPh
fn1: still the 1904 Olympics gym and locker room at that time with heavy-duty tile everwhere
Re:Like it would have mattered (Score:5, Insightful)
You don't think a system at a university university with over 10k students streaming video over youtube, Facebook, netflix, etc, could handle a bunch of tweeting reporters?
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You don't think a system at a university university with over 10k students streaming video over youtube, Facebook, netflix, etc, could handle a bunch of tweeting reporters?
No, I don't think the CELL system would have handled the increased load unless the venue was used often at this capacity...
Plus, doing WiFi for 3,000 in a small building is a lit more complex than it seems to the casual user...
But that's not what we are really talking about in this article. I get the feeling they are mixing up a couple of things that don't really go together.
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No, I don't think the CELL system would have handled the increased load unless the venue was used often at this capacity...
Well, you're wrong.
Plus, doing WiFi for 3,000 in a small building is a lit more complex than it seems to the casual user...
But that's not what we are really talking about in this article. I get the feeling they are mixing up a couple of things that don't really go together.
WiFi wasn't needed from the venue. People needed to be able to use their own connections. The venue wanted to profit. And yes, they're profiting. $200 per head for access, equipment and install and config done as a line item on someone else's dime, and they keep everything in the end.
Re:Like it would have mattered (Score:4, Insightful)
Hofstra has been used for this purpose before, and for much bigger conferences than the measly 1000 people in the hall last night.
They charged $200/head for their wi-fi hotspot. $200,000 can pay for a lot of bandwidth for a 90 minute event.
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You think students wouldn't want to go online with their cell phones? Actually, PRIMARILY with their cell phone?
What luddite university did you go to?
Re:Like it would have mattered (Score:4, Insightful)
No, it is about mutual benefit. Even if n journalists are competing for the limited cell signal, they will saturate 2.5 and 5ghz with hotspots, eliminating wifi as a useful tool.
Using your phone as a camera or whatever would be fine... fight for cell signal. Everyone else benefits with more reliable wifi...
Re: Like it would have mattered (Score:2)
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Then you accept it as a cost of doing business, add it to the expenses, and everyone is blissfully igonorant of your hard work making their experience easier.
Or you profit.
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"Cell phone networks are usually provisioned for "just enough" capacity under normal circumstances"
Oh, like where I HAVE LUNCH MONDAY THROUGH THURSDAY?
Yeah, where I eat lunch four days a week there is not enough cell capacity for those 2 hours when we all march out to eat, surf, and post.
I can eat where 'free' WiFi is offered. If I choose something more interesting, I suffer the vagaries of cell service and the inadequate provisioning of my provider. Ack.
And I stick it out, because the rest of the time it's
not limitless (Score:4, Interesting)
There is not a limitless amount of bandwidth to broadcast in a small area. Most of these devices are operating in the same spectrum (since they are WiFi, UHF and SHF). The FCC almost certainly has the exclusive legal right to regulate the radio spectrum, but the organizer of an event should be given some way to coordinate and organize access to the limited resource. That the FCC lacks any way for an event to legally do something that I believe they should be doing. I argue that the FCC needs a form and a fee for this sort of thing before organizers are allowed to restrict WiFi access. And that requests are temporary and limited to santioned events and not for a coffee shop or theme park that wants to gouge customers.
Of course I'm ignoring the issue of free speech. Does your right to free speech include running your own WiFi network to circumvent a potentially malicious organization's WiFi?
$200 per head seems about right on price, if I had to hire some consultants to throw together a network for 3 days, then tear it all down, seems like a bargain.
Re:not limitless (Score:5, Interesting)
I dunno what prices you've been conned into paying, but that parses as gouging to me.
Consultants aren't necessary; Hofstra already has an IT infrastructure and staff in place. At worst, they'd have to deploy a couple dozen more WAPs and maybe a 24-port switch if you don't already have the ports free -- maybe USD$4000.00 worth of HW. Set up a new SSID for the reporters with a WPA2 login, which lands you on a temporary VLAN and subnet that routes directly to the Internet and nowhere else. Takes maybe a day to set up, and most of that is CS interns/undergrads pulling Cat.6 and placing WAPs/antennas.
After the debate, turn off the SSID, VLAN, and subnet -- you can pull out the WAPs (if you must) at your leisure. Put the HW away; save it for the next big event, or when an endowment arrives for the next building.
How does this justify $200/head? (Seriously; what am I not figuring here?)
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$200/head might be the price point that the media companies won't complain.
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But, let's keep going and try to make it look better for them.
If we assume they sprung for high-end enterprise grade access points that won't dr
Re:not limitless (Score:4, Informative)
Except it did go down. It completely collapsed under the load.
I understand the need and that if everyone brought their own hotspot that it would be completely useless. But that's not the way to do it. At $200, it sounds like gouging - especially when you consider they actually did active scans for unauthorized WiFi and escorted people out.
The problem is many - first, the price appeared to be gouging. Second, active WiFi scanning - granted, they didn't jam (which was what got the hotels in trouble) but escorted you off the premises so it was technically legal. Third, they could've offered suggestions that people use hard wire (USB) tethers or built-in WWAN modems to achieve connectivity instead of WiFI Most of the people there would be using tablets, laptops, etc, many models of which have WWAN capability either built-in through USB dongles. Or a USB cable to their phones (practically all smartphones allow USB tethering)
Because right now, it appears to be gouging. Which is why the FCC is irked. I'm sure if they simply suggested other methods, politely asked anyone using WiFi to turn it off and use non-WiFi methods, etc.
Yes, a lot of wifi causes problems - Apple has had problems during their keynotes because everyone had their hotspots on, but there are many ways it can be handled without it seeming like pure greed.
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They can... They get an FCC licenses for restricted RF bands, and use those, instead of heavy-handed attempts at individuals co-opting and monopolizing unlicensed bands.
Blocking is illegal, but this isn't... (Score:3)
The "blocking" that was illegal uses RF to kill a rouge access point, intentionally interfering with a licensed use of the spectrum the FCC is tasked to regulate..... This is squarely in the wheel house of the FCC, who's job includes protecting the licensed users of spectrum from interference.
What was done here is put a requirement in a contract that required you to turn off your RF emitters carried into the facility unless the facility engineer approved it's use. This is 100% legal and the FCC doesn't have anything authority to regulate this. In fact, this is commonly referred to as "frequency coordination" and given the large number of possible devices showing up, makes perfect sense to me. You don't want some rouge RF device getting turned on and interfering with Lester's Wireless microphone in the middle of a question. So, you make it part of your contract that ALL RF emitting devices are subject to inspection and approval before they are allowed into the venue and turned on.
So the two cases are not the same and the venue operator has broken no laws.
Re: Blocking is illegal, but this isn't... (Score:4, Funny)
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Exactly this. What the University can't prohibit is someone on different property running a competing wifi network. If they allow some hotspots or allowed you to pay a fee to run your own hotspot I could see some creative arguments to be made. What you absolutely don't have a right to do is to carry whatever you want onto someone else's property. Take for example weapons bans which prohibit students from bringing knives to school, to Disney World, etc. You can tell people that they are not welcome if they b
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Except you increasingly DO have that right.
"a growing number of states are passing laws where the right to ban firearms does not extend to vehicles in employer parking lots."
- http://www.employmentlawdaily.... [employmentlawdaily.com]
Schools are increasingly being thrown open to concealed guns:
- http://neatoday.org/2015/03/ [neatoday.org]
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First, note thought that I was using the firearms example as a hyperbolic one, it's a harder argument to ban them due to constitutional protection and even so we're just beginning to see erosion of the right to ban them. Electronic devices would be somewhere far down the list. Second, we're not talking about a parking lot here, we're talking about an already secured area where many other things are also prohibited.
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Except these electronic devices can call 911 in the event of emergency, which gives them all manner of very special legal protections.
That was only one of the two exceptions I referenced. The other isn't limited to parking lots.
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What you absolutely don't have a right to do is to carry whatever you want onto someone else's property. Take for example weapons bans which prohibit students from bringing knives to school, to Disney World, etc. You can tell people that they are not welcome if they bring X onto your property all you want.
This isn't the same. I'm still allowed to take my mobile device into the event. They just didn't want me to use a certain feature of that device. That is different than not allowing an item altogether.
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Oh sure it is.. Private property owners are given great latitude in controlling who may access their property and under what terms they allow access. For instance the venue owner may make the following rule:
You may bring in your phone, but you must declare it and it must remain in airplane mode at all times on the premises. (which is actually MORE restrictive than what happened here)
Then the owners can legally enforce that rule by searching people entering, refusing to allow anybody who doesn't agree to t
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Nobody that entered the arena signed a contract. You wanna claim that show me one.
If I was one of the reporters I would have run my wifi hotspot from inside a pocket or backpack.
There is simply no reasonable way you can enforce a restriction like this without jamming wifi hotspots. You'd need a ton of gear and a bunch of trained people to find the people running hotspots (triangulating this down to a single person in a group of a hundred people using wifi would be a serious pain in the ass) and eject them a
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So, you're telling me that selling licenses to use part of the radio spectrum for $200 is somehow not licensing the spectrum?
Man, some people will twist themselves into knots to defend anything.
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No licenses where being sold, and the $200 was for access to the WiFi network, paying for the service. Apart from violating the TOS I have with my provider, I can sell wifi service to you....
You guys are conflating is two separate things.... The "selling" of WiFi service (which is 100% legal), and the desire of the venue to coordinate the use of both licensed and part 15 intentional emitters within the confines of the venue which is legal too.
But hey, don't let me get in your way of a good story line...
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The obvious and intended effect of their actions was to deny access to that part of the spectrum unless a fee was paid. But keep inventing legal fictions - but why would you even try to defend these schmucks?
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Gee, I will stick to my perspective while you keep changing yours...
First they where selling licenses, but that didn't work with the facts so you dropped that. Now they where denying access to part of the spectrum, which isn't true either...
They where NOT preventing anybody from operating on any spectrum they wished, you could walk outside of the venue and crank up your WiFi hotspot anytime you wished. Private property owners have the right to allow or deny any activity on their property they choose, inc
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They where NOT preventing anybody from operating on any spectrum they wished, you could walk outside of the venue and crank up your WiFi hotspot anytime you wished. Private property owners have the right to allow or deny any activity on their property they choose
C'mon, that's so obviously not true I'm not sure how you finished typing it. Anyway, the airwaves are special. You can't charge a fee to have access to them on your property. (So many things are special that it's hard to think of them as special cases these days - there are exceptions to just about everything you wrote - for example, you can't make rules that have the effect of excluding black people from your property. There's lots of case law around dress codes.) Excluding is different from restrictin
Someone just got ripped off (Score:3)
I've seen the commercial offerings that claim you need to tune the antennas. They seem to have gone a step further and have a dedicated tech for "detecting interference". At best it is a hotspot management tool, usually it's expensive snake oil. Especially on a small area like this, a good set of APs should be able to handle the "load" and have enough power to handle other APs, especially the weak phone ones.
Why the heck can't they just use a cable? (Score:3)
I can totally understand banning Wifi hotspot access points at big crowded events like this. Just a few dozen in the same area is enough to completely use all available bandwidth in the form of beacons. Performance will suck for EVERYONE, including the venue WiFi.
Why not just use a cable? Most phones support tethering over USB, and it'll even perform better than WiFi hotspot mode because it's a direct cable connection so the only RF you're doing is cellular. I always try to do USB tethering when possible to avoid polluting the airwaves with my needless access point.
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I can totally understand many things which happen to be illegal. I don't think anyone is dumbfounded by the idea of theft, extortion, etc.
Then the venue should have licensed their own radio spectrum from the FCC. Guaranteed there would be zero contention for their band, then.
You don't get to monopolize unlicensed spectrum, and tell people they can't use t
Re: Why the heck can't they just use a cable? (Score:2)
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Nope. There are presumably millions of exceptions to that statement. You're obviously not a lawyer, and clearly not qualified to weigh-in on whether any regs were violated. The fact that the FCC has taken an interest clearly shows it's not cut and dried.
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Hofstra vs the First Amendment (Score:2)
Because a presidential political debate is a public function from which reporters are expected to file stories as part of their editorial function, Hofstra has no business preventing people from using their own cellular communications and should be massively spanked for this action. Besides, it's a university, with a crapton of money rolling in from those huge tuitions, not a hotel trying to run a business - though the FCC has already ruled that convention hotels can't do this either..
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If a thousand people try to use their wireless devices at the same time, none are going to work, unless a lot of engineering has been put into designing things.
Cell Phones might work if there are enough towers covering the area, but WiFi will not as it wasn't designed for that kind of thing.
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Exactly! That's why the expensive house WiFi collapsed for those who ponied up the $200 gouge.
All the more reason to let attendees use their own cell connections.
Sign says "No Guns Allowed" or (Score:2)
On their property, Hofstra certainly has a right to say "No WI-FI Hot Spots Permitted", just as they have a right to post "No Guns Permitted".
If you do not wish to comply, move along or face trespassing charges.
Trying running your own extension cord... (Score:2)
Want to talk about profiteering? Try plugging in a projector in a meeting room or running an extension cord from the wall to your laptop.
Watch the IBEW folks come running at you screaming!
I hope Hofstra thought ahead. (Score:2)
They were not licensing spectrum. (Score:2)
They were prohibiting the use of a type of device. I see nothing about bans of Bluetooth or ZigBee using the 2.4 GHz range.
I've also seen no reports of sending de-auth packets, which is exactly what the FCC can enforce.
An institution saying "If you shout during the debate from the audience, we will escort you out" is not a ban on free speech.
Likewise, saying "If you bring your own access point, you we will escort you out" isn't licensing the 2.4 GHz spectrum.
If the Commission on Presidential Debates made (Score:2)
Anybody remember the Port Authority? (Score:2)
The WiFi bands are unlicensed and users *must* accept interference from other users. The FCC already went through this with the Port Authority when they tried to ban their tenets from offering WiFi services.
http://www.govtech.com/policy-... [govtech.com]
https://www.cnet.com/news/fcc-... [cnet.com]
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Which frequencies are you suggesting they use?
Spectrum is expensive and a finite resource for practical purposes and you have to coordinate who's using which ones where and when to avoid interfering with each other. You cannot just decide, say to use the frequencies dedicated to GPS use for high speed long distance data transmission, without creating an issue for the existing spectrum users.
By and large, this is exactly why the FCC and the ITU exist, to manage the spectrum space..
Re:There's plenty of space (Score:5, Insightful)
This. The FCC is important, RF regulation is important as spectrum is a shared resource and is not contained by walls, geographic boundaries, etc. Someone needs to be in charge of preventing interference and encouraging research of effective use of a limited resource.
Side rant, I think it was a poor choice to raise a bunch of money by starting the sell spectrum to cell providers in the 90s instead of licensing it to them as had been done before and is still done for most frequencies. The FCC has effectively ceded regulatory control of huge chunks of spectrum so now a lot of power is concentrated into a few companies that own spectrum and it's not necessarily in their interest to pursue certain RF research or new RF technology and we have no societal via governmental way to force transitions to new technology. Imagine if TV stations owned their spectrum, we might never have been able to force a HD digital transition.
Re:There's plenty of space (Score:4, Informative)
Bandwidth auctions are only selling off a LEASE of that spectrum in the first place.
Auctioning is a good way to allocate limited resources. The significant expense highly discourages carriers from buying anything they won't extensively use (leaving it open for smaller organizations) and have also encouraged the FCC to open up more spectrum to get in on some more of that big cash.
It's money from the cellular carriers that has been paying for developments of 3G and 4G technologies, and is continuing with a surprisingly fast push to work on 5G.
And again, the huge expense of buying new spectrum in an auction is encouraging cellular carriers to "densify" their networks, instead of just expanding their bandwidth.
There's been no need for the government to force carriers to start shutting off their 2G networks and rolling out 4G. There's competition in the market, and tighter integration between sender and receiver. TV networks could never have hoped to force their audience to upgrade their all their TVs, but cell carriers can and regularly do.
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If you're hosting an event such as this, you should anticipate and plan for the needs.
Go to a sporting event, like an NFL game, and see how 60,000+ fans tax your RF environment. You solve the problem.
Hofstra could have handled this better, or the Debate Commission could have. The method they chose is subject to some criticism, isn't it?
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Hofstra could have handled this better, or the Debate Commission could have. The method they chose is subject to some criticism, isn't it?
I think not. What they did was reasonable and it wasn't like all the reporters didn't know what the deal was. Not to mention Hofstra was only following the contracted agreements they had with the Presidential Debate commission....
My guess is somebody got a bee in their bonnet about something and thought they'd get their 5 min of fame out of it. After all, it was pretty likely all the reporters who had to pay the $200 where a bit miffed at the cost, not knowing how much this kind of thing actually costs
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If you're hosting an event such as this, you should anticipate and plan for the needs.
Go to a sporting event, like an NFL game, and see how 60,000+ fans tax your RF environment. You solve the problem.
Hofstra could have handled this better, or the Debate Commission could have. The method they chose is subject to some criticism, isn't it?
Funny you mention WiFi at sporting events last month I went to a baseball game in Seattle with my father and the Free stadium WiFi was faster than the internet speed I get at home.
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Well, of course he will because "I'm SMART!"
Re:Trump (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:So They think they have a license for that band (Score:5, Interesting)
Unfortunately, putting any kind of restriction on a part-15 device is exactly "sub-licensing", which you're not allowed to do.
That it was private property is... going to be an interesting argument :)
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INCORRECT. They are not putting a restriction on the devices operation, they are forbidding you from using the device. A restriction would be sub-licensing and not allowed. Not allowing their use at all is actually fine.
Really?
http://www.govtech.com/policy-... [govtech.com]
https://www.cnet.com/news/fcc-... [cnet.com]
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Sort of. I may not be allowed to regulate your Part 15 device (e.g. emission levels, etc.) but I can tell you not to bring it onto my property. There are absolutely private establishments which prohibit you from taking a cell phone, laptop, or just about anything else inside. There is no guaranteed right to bring anything you want onto someone else's property. Even guns, a right specifically enumerated by the constitution, can be prohibited from a private establishment.
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But they weren't preventing people from bringing the devices onto their property.
Instead, they were sublicensing the spectrum that the devices were using.
Re: So They think they have a license for that ban (Score:2)
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They were doing no such thing. They were flat out forbidding the use of the devices.
That's what "licensing a spectrum" is! Only approved devices are allowed to use this (part of the) spectrum. It doesn't get any clearer than that. Want to use this part of the spectrum? Pay a $200 license fee.
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"The university has no role whatsoever or anybody else with private property."
The same argument could be made that places can't ban smoking because the cigarettes are someone's private property.
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If you visit my house and your part 15 device interferes with mine, guess who shuts off their device or leaves?
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Me. In accordance with part 15, because my device obviously causes interference. And until it does, stfu.
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Re: (Score:2)
Apparently free press is increasingly becoming a threat to national security.