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| Date: Mon, 6 Oct 2014 13:42:24 -0700 (PDT)
From: Neal McLain <nmclain.remove-this@and-this-too.annsgarden.com>
To: telecomdigestsubmissions.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: Incentive Auctions
Message-ID: <8b704bc4-ba9f-4fc4-9f7b-3e8840e1b722@googlegroups.com>
On Monday, October 6, 2014 9:18:48 AM UTC-5, Fred Goldstein wrote:
> On 10/5/2014 10:31 PM, danny burstein wrote:
>
>> In <m0sips$1030$1@grapevine.csail.mit.edu> wollman@bimajority.org
>> (Garrett Wollman) writes:
>>> VHF spectrum in general is very undesirable because of the required
>>> size of antennas.
>
>> But does the over-the-air coverage pattern, so to speak, really
>> matter that much to many of the broadcasters these days? As long
>> as they meet FCC requirements to "serve the area" (term used
>> loosely) well enough to be able to get into the various mandated
>> "cable shall carry" deal, they'll still be printing money.
>
> Nominal (per FCC contour maps) coverage matters if a station wants
> must-carry.
True for NCE (non-commercial educational stations.
47 CFR 76.55 Definitions applicable to the must-carry rules.
(a) Qualified noncommercial educational (NCE) television station.
(b) Qualified local noncommercial educational (NCE) television station.
http://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/47/76.55
47 CFR 76.56 Signal carriage obligations
(a) Carriage of qualified noncommercial educational stations.
http://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/47/76.56
NCE stations do not have retransmission consent rights.
However, full-power commercial stations have must-carry rights
throughout their Designated Market Areas (subject to numerous
exceptions). DMAs are defined by Nielsen Media Research and do not
correspond to FCC contour maps. DMAs usually follow county lines but
some large counties (e.g. San Bernardino County California) are split
between two DMAs.
47 CFR 76.55 Definitions applicable to the must-carry rules.
(c) Local commercial television station.
http://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/47/76.55
47 CFR 76.56 Signal carriage obligations
(b) Carriage of local commercial television stations.
http://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/47/76.56
Full-power commercial stations also have retransmission-consent
rights.
47 CFR 76.64 Retransmission consent.
http://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/47/76.64
> Bear in mind, though, that must-carry is normally only invoked by
> stations that aren't particularly desirable. A station may choose
> to either invoke must-carry, in which case cable doesn't pay it
> anything, or it can demand payment per subscriber. The big network
> stations are demanding ever-higher payment -- that's why TWC briefly
> dropped ABC in New York a couple of years ago. (ABC usually
> requires cable to pick up a bunch of channels in a package,
> including the ridiculously-expensive ESPN, just to carry the local
> station.)
True for Commercial stations. However NCE stations do not have
retransmission consent rights.
Neal McLain
|
| Date: Mon, 06 Oct 2014 15:53:42 -0400
From: Barry Margolin <barmar@alum.mit.edu>
To: telecomdigestsubmissions.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: Bluetooth people trackers in payphone kiosks in NYC
Message-ID: <barmar-8EB4CA.15534206102014@88-209-239-213.giganet.hu>
In article <02c53a1m45acah0kauqfcr48pseb5eq0jg@4ax.com>,
Pete Cresswell <PeteCress@invalid.telecom-digest.org> wrote:
> Per danny burstein:
> >www.buzzfeed.com/josephbernstein/exclusive-hundreds-of-devices-hidden-inside-
> >new-york-city-ph
>
> I thought my device had to consent to be paired with another BlueTooth
> device.
>
> The article seems to suggest that a nearby BlueTooth device can pair
> with my phone with no interaction from me.
>
> Can somebody explain?
Here's some more information about iBeacon:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBeacon
It doesn't go into much detail about this, but I gather that Bluetooth
Low Energy doesn't require the devices to pair with each other
explicitly. It seems to be the same technology used for using a
smartphone to pay for something by holding it next to the POS terminal.
The beacon simply broadcasts its UUID, and the mobile device may send
back its UUID in response. For many uses, the device doesn't have to
respond -- the iBeacon-enabled application uses the beacon's UUID to
determine its location, and display appropriate information or ads.
The way you're tracked isn't by detecting the device directly. Rather,
it's because the application needs to look up the beacon's UUID over the
Internet, to find out what it should display. The server that provides
this information can record information about which device queried it,
and which beacon it was looking up.
--
Barry Margolin, barmar@alum.mit.edu
Arlington, MA
*** PLEASE post questions in newsgroups, not directly to me ***
|
| Date: Mon, 06 Oct 2014 16:36:39 -0400
From: Pete Cresswell <PeteCress@invalid.telecom-digest.org>
To: telecomdigestsubmissions.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: Bluetooth people trackers in payphone kiosks in NYC
Message-ID: <k8v53a5kq2905bgm4nv258o7aubmvqpmb4@4ax.com>
Per Barry Margolin:
>***** Moderator's Note *****
>... What I want to know is how the beacons can report on the location
>of a cell phone that's nearby, and how such use became possible
>without cellphone owners apparently being aware of it.
Thanks. I feel vindicated...
Now we need somebody to tell us how this stuff happens without the
target cell phone's consent....
--
Pete Cresswell
|
| Date: Tue, 07 Oct 2014 13:59:38 -0400
From: Barry Margolin <barmar@alum.mit.edu>
To: telecomdigestsubmissions.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: Bluetooth people trackers in payphone kiosks in NYC
Message-ID: <barmar-9979CC.13593807102014@88-209-239-213.giganet.hu>
In article <k8v53a5kq2905bgm4nv258o7aubmvqpmb4@4ax.com>,
Pete Cresswell <PeteCress@invalid.telecom-digest.org> wrote:
> Per Barry Margolin:
> >***** Moderator's Note *****
> >... What I want to know is how the beacons can report on the location
> >of a cell phone that's nearby, and how such use became possible
> >without cellphone owners apparently being aware of it.
>
> Thanks. I feel vindicated...
>
> Now we need somebody to tell us how this stuff happens without the
> target cell phone's consent....
When you install an app that uses iBeacon, that's the consent.
Hopefully the app allows you to opt in/out of using this (unless, of
course, that's the only point of the app).
- -
Barry Margolin, barmar@alum.mit.edu
Arlington, MA
*** PLEASE post questions in newsgroups, not directly to me ***
***** Moderator's Note *****
Since the company serves multiple cities, including mine, please tell
the readers how to spot "beacon-enabled" aps. This kind of thing
worries me.
Bill Horne
Moderator
|
| Date: Tue, 7 Oct 2014 12:36:37 -0400
From: Bill Horne <bill@horneQRM.net>
To: telecomdigestsubmissions.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: New York City orders tracking devices turned off
Message-ID: <20141007163637.GA28099@telecom.csail.mit.edu>
After BuzzFeed revealed late Sunday that a digital advertising firm,
Titan 360, was using public pay phones in New York City (yes, they
still exist) to host Gimbal Bluetooth tracking beacons, the mayor's
office has now ordered them to come down.
The beacons can be used to log nearby phones. Bluetooth addresses and
mark the date, time, and location where they are seen. As such, the
beacons can be used as a way to track physical movements of cellphone
users, potentially allowing advertisers to serve those phones
customized spots. (Users who have Bluetooth turned off on their phones
will not be seen by the beacons.)
Rest at:
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/10/new-york-city-orders-bluetooth-beacons-in-pay-phones-to-come-down/
-or-
http://goo.gl/UvTIk3
--
Bill Horne
(Remove QRM from my email address to write to me directly)
|
| Date: Mon, 6 Oct 2014 13:33:55 -0700
From: dplatt@coop.radagast.org (David Platt)
To: telecomdigestsubmissions.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: Bluetooth people trackers in payphone kiosks in NYC
Message-ID: <juabgb-7kj.ln1@coop.radagast.org>
In article <02c53a1m45acah0kauqfcr48pseb5eq0jg@4ax.com>,
Pete Cresswell <PeteCress@invalid.telecom-digest.org> wrote:
>>www.buzzfeed.com/josephbernstein/exclusive-hundreds-of-devices-hidden-inside-new-york-city-ph
>
>I thought my device had to consent to be paired with another BlueTooth
>device.
>
>The article seems to suggest that a nearby BlueTooth device can pair
>with my phone with no interaction from me.
Look up BTLE ("Bluetooth Low Energy"). It's a somewhat different
beast than "classic" BlueTooth.
|
| Date: Tue, 7 Oct 2014 09:00:37 -0400
From: Charles Jackson <clj@jacksons.net>
To: telecomdigestsubmissions.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: Incentive Auctions
Message-ID: <CANog7L5v2s=EPih=uarv+1o1HcLTnBzAgQjysXGtsLZhnSE1qw@mail.gmail.com>
Bill Horne wrote:
> The "VHF Spectrum" Fred referred to is the group of channels I had
> suggested might be made available for "5G" data or other
> cellular-related use: he was pointing out that cellular providers
> don't like VHF because the wavelengths, and thus the antennas, are too
> long for use in compact cellphones.
>
> Shorter wavelengths means shorter cellphone antennas, which means that
> the Low-VHF spectrum is being shunned by cellular licensees: a
> consideration which I had not thought of.
Well, not really shunned. There's just been no opportunity to license
that spectrum for cellular. The older IMTS (pre-cellular wireless
telephone) systems operated at 450 MHz or so. There is also the
problem of substantial man-made noise in the VHF band.
The incentive auction process will free up some spectrum at 600 MHz for
wireless. There's an extensive discussion of issues such as filtering and
antenna bandwidth in the technical appendix to the FCC order regarding the
incentive auction. (FCC 14-50 Report and Order in GN Docket 12-268).
"Modern research is looking at much higher frequencies for wireless. We
already have Wi-Gig (60 GHz). People are proposing using millimeter waves
for commercial wireless."
"Over 20 GHz of spectrum is waiting to be used for cellular or WLAN traffic
in the 28, 38, and 72 GHz bands alone, and hundreds of gigahertz more
spectrum could be used at frequencies above 100 GHz." [from
Rappaport, Theodore S.; Heath, Robert W., Jr.; Daniels, Robert C.; Murdock,
James N. (2014-09-09). Millimeter Wave Wireless Communications (Prentice
Hall Communications Engineering and Emerging Technologies Series) (p. 3).
Pearson Education. Kindle Edition.]
Fred Goldstein wrote:
> The other problem is bandwidth. TV channels are 6 MHz wide, and the
> whole VHF range is not all that big. So if there is some pressing need
> for mobile access to cat videos in higher resolution than can be
> provided in 4G LTE, then it will no doubt need wider channels. That
> again points to higher frequencies.
Right, as the quote above from Rappaport et al. points out, if you want
GHz of bandwidth, you have to go to much higher frequencies. Wi-Gig claims
data rates up to 7 Gbps. But, as I understand it, the Wi-Gig systems
deployed today can only reach about 4.5 Gbps. (Only 4.5 Gbps!) But, that
is in a 2 GHz+ bandwidth channel.
Chuck
***** Moderator's Note *****
The IMTS system used both the 150 MHz high-VHF band, and the 470 MHz
UHF band. There was also an older manual system, called "MTS", which
operated in the 40 MHz region.
The UHF units were only for IMTS, but VHF IMTS mobile phones could be
used in areas that still had only manual service.
Bill Horne
Moderator
|
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