AT&T GSM 850 Blamed For Police Radio Outages In Oakland
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This is crazy
So - If a new "public saftey" network, or radio (device) is created that interferes with a network that is already licensed and has already existed for years, That previous network is at fault, however if it happens the other way around (LightSquared) then they are SOL ?
I am clapping my hands now.
Shouldn't the government and whoever is in charge of public safety test these devices to ensure they comply with FCC regulations?
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That is true, use the old equipment till the new equipment doesn't interfere.
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They couldn't! The old equipment was interfering with Sprint!
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Wow didn't Sprint have a similar issue a few years back with Nextel's band as well? I think they ended up refarming iDEN and in exchange the government gave them the PCS 1900MHz G block? Weird this happening on AT&T's 850MHz as it's been around for years even during TDMA days, no?
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Indeed. It was the police band relocation to avoid interfering with Sprint that caused THIS issue!
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My memory could be fuzzy here, but I think the iDEN problem was because Nextel was using a shared band initially intended for many different organizations to use as a handy-talky kind of application (resulting in low-volume usage), but Nextel was using it for a high-volume telephone system and started to crowd it.
I don't know exactly what the problem is with the 850 system, as I thought it was dedicated to cellular and any public safety systems would have been assigned bands which wouldn't be harmed by the existing cellular bands. It seems kind of ridiculous that this stuff wasn't planned with the expectation that a police car would regularly get within 1/2 mile of cellular towers. There must be some major detail I am missing.
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Exactly. It's the fault of the vendor that installed the new police network. No question.
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That's the same thing I was wondering...someone else sets up a network on a frequency that has been assigned to at&t, and at&t is the one that has to move? What exactly is the point of the FCC assigning a specific frequency to you if someone else can just come in and take it?
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Exactly what I was wondering too. This may be something that the government will use in the future to snatch up, or "steal" the spectrum that they want to use for their own private networks if it is already being used. I mean, even if they arent using that exact frequency, if they claim it is causing interference, and force the interfering equipment to be turned off, that is in effect the same thing.
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