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The Telecom Digest for January 16, 2012
Volume 31 : Issue 16 : "text" Format
====== 30 years of TELECOM Digest -- Founded August 21, 1981 ======
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Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the
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See the bottom of this issue for subscription and archive details
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Date: Sun, 15 Jan 2012 08:58:55 -0500
From: Barry Margolin <barmar@alum.mit.edu>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: Ringing Finally Ended, but There's No Button to
Message-ID: <barmar-40069A.08585515012012@news.eternal-september.org>
In article <nDbw8.A.QtC.S2nEPB@telecom>,
Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com> wrote:
> The "Patron X" mentioned in the NY Times story claimed that his
> employer had just switched him from a blackberry to an iphone, and
> that the sound was actually an alarm signal, not the phone
> ringing. Sounds like revisionist history ex post factotum to me, but
> even if it's true, that only proves that the person in question felt
> entitled to take an active electronic device into a concert hall
> without bothering to RTFM. The gaul of some people!
RTFM? Of an iPhone? It's a computer with a zillion apps, do you really
think there's a FM that explains all of them?
The guy said that he switched the phone into silent mode. If this is
true, I think he was perfectly reasonable in assuming that this would
silence the device, and I agree with his surprise that the alarm clock
would make a noisy ring. And if he didn't even know the phone had an
alarm clock, he's obviously going to be doubly surprised.
I do find it a bit hard to believe that he didn't know it had an alarm:
even dumb cellphones have this, and how could he have set the alarm
without going into the app? I don't have an iPhone, but I expect that
it takes more than one errant click to set the alarm.
--
Barry Margolin, barmar@alum.mit.edu
Arlington, MA
*** PLEASE post questions in newsgroups, not directly to me ***
Date: Sun, 15 Jan 2012 11:40:08 -0500 (EST)
From: Randall Webmail <rvh40.remove-this@and-this-too.insightbb.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Lightsquared/GPS
Message-ID: <528444186.671612.1326645607989.JavaMail.root@md03.insight.synacor.com>
>Dave Murphy, PC Magazine
> According to officials, LightSquared's proposed (and controversial)
> plan to launch a new LTE network - and then sell access rights to
> the service to regional and rural wireless carriers, and other
> partners - interferes too greatly with existing GPS systems.
LSQ has a license to use their frequencies and GPS devices use
adjacent unlicensed frequencies, correct? Don't unlicensed devices
(such as GPS) have to accept interference from other devices, as a
condition of their unlicensed use?
It'd really suck to have to replace all my GPS devices, as they are
quite useful, but since LSQ has a license and GPS doesn't - why is
this a question?
Date: Sun, 15 Jan 2012 14:20:27 -0500
From: Bill Horne <bill@horneQRM.net>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: Lightsquared/GPS
Message-ID: <20120115192027.GA1666@telecom.csail.mit.edu>
On Sun, Jan 15, 2012 at 11:40:08AM -0500, Randall Webmail wrote:
> >Dave Murphy, PC Magazine
>
> > According to officials, LightSquared's proposed (and controversial)
> > plan to launch a new LTE network - and then sell access rights to
> > the service to regional and rural wireless carriers, and other
> > partners - interferes too greatly with existing GPS systems.
>
> LSQ has a license to use their frequencies and GPS devices use
> adjacent unlicensed frequencies, correct? Don't unlicensed devices
> (such as GPS) have to accept interference from other devices, as a
> condition of their unlicensed use?
>
> It'd really suck to have to replace all my GPS devices, as they are
> quite useful, but since LSQ has a license and GPS doesn't - why is
> this a question?
GPS does have proper authority, and the frequencies it uses are reserved for
the purpose. IIRC, it's a military service, and doesn't need FCC
approval. No matter: GPS has never pretended to be anything that it
isn't.
What LightSquared has is a license for an "Ancilliary Terrestrial
Component", which is supposed to allow a company that has satellite(s)
in orbit to provide coverage in the very limited places that
satellites can't reach: tunnels under cities, etc.
What LightSquared is trying to do is to convert their "ATC" license
into their only service: in other words, they're trying to join the
cellular market without ponying up the hundreds of millions of dollars
that other cellular data providers contributed to the US treasury in
return for their licenses. Harbinger capital was/is betting that
LightSquared can sleeze their "LTE" radio transceivers onto every
cellular tower that Sprint has erected, and convert it's "Ancilliary"
service over to a terrestrial-only network that avoids the expense of
orbiting and maintaining sattelites - and the need for their customers
to buy satellite-capable cellular data units. It's an end-run around
the spectrum allocation auction process, and LightSquared should be
shot down for that reason alone.
The fact that LightSquared's ATC frequencies are adjacent to the GPS
band is not a coincidence: the whole reason that LightSquared obtained
the assignement is because those bands are intended for sattelite
transmitters, hundreds of miles above the earth. Had LightSquared
planned a /satellite/-based network, they could have used the bands
they were assigned without any risk of interfering with GPS, but
LightSquared has bet the farm on their lobbyists being able to change
the laws of physics.
Bill
--
Bill Horne
(Remove QRM from my address to write to me directly)
Date: Sun, 15 Jan 2012 16:40:47 +0000 (UTC)
From: David Scheidt <dscheidt@panix.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: Ringing Finally Ended, but There's No Button to
Message-ID: <jeuvif$1d8$1@reader1.panix.com>
Barry Margolin <barmar@alum.mit.edu> wrote:
:In article <nDbw8.A.QtC.S2nEPB@telecom>,
: Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com> wrote:
:> The "Patron X" mentioned in the NY Times story claimed that his
:> employer had just switched him from a blackberry to an iphone, and
:> that the sound was actually an alarm signal, not the phone
:> ringing. Sounds like revisionist history ex post factotum to me, but
:> even if it's true, that only proves that the person in question felt
:> entitled to take an active electronic device into a concert hall
:> without bothering to RTFM. The gaul of some people!
:RTFM? Of an iPhone? It's a computer with a zillion apps, do you really
:think there's a FM that explains all of them?
:The guy said that he switched the phone into silent mode. If this is
:true, I think he was perfectly reasonable in assuming that this would
:silence the device, and I agree with his surprise that the alarm clock
:would make a noisy ring. And if he didn't even know the phone had an
:alarm clock, he's obviously going to be doubly surprised.
:I do find it a bit hard to believe that he didn't know it had an alarm:
:even dumb cellphones have this, and how could he have set the alarm
:without going into the app? I don't have an iPhone, but I expect that
:it takes more than one errant click to set the alarm.
Well, you can do it by talking to it, so it takes zero errant taps.
But you're likely going to notice saying "set alarm for 9:30 pm" to
your phone.
What's likely here is that the alarm was set by something like a
calendar. It's entirely possible for that to happen without user
interaction, particularly in a corporate enviornment, where there's a
centeralized calendar server, and your boss can edit yours.
--
sig 97
***** Moderator's Note *****
Perhaps an overworked, underpaid system administrator became tired of
answering questions by executives who were unwilling to RTFM?
Bill Horne
Moderator
Date: Sun, 15 Jan 2012 12:46:22 -0500
From: Bill Horne <bill@horneQRM.net>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: More on the Captured U.S. Drone
Message-ID: <4F1310EE.8020106@horne.net>
Another story from Bruce Schneier: this is from his "Schneier on
Security" blog.
There's a report that Iran hacked the drones' GPS systems:
"The GPS navigation is the weakest point," the Iranian engineer told
the Monitor, giving the most detailed description yet published of
Iran's "electronic ambush" of the highly classified US drone. "By
putting noise [jamming] on the communications, you force the bird
into autopilot. This is where the bird loses its brain."
The "spoofing" technique that the Iranians used -- which took into
account precise landing altitudes, as well as latitudinal and
longitudinal data -- made the drone "land on its own where we wanted
it to, without having to crack the remote-control signals and
communications" from the US control center, says the engineer.
Now, here's the part that confuses me: if Iran was able to spoof GPS
signals to misguide a drone to land outside it's home field, that seems
to indicate that the drone wasn't using the encrypted military version
of the GPS signal, which raises lots of questions about just who is in
charge of designing the guidance systems for these devices, and how much
Uncle Sam is paying for them. If all the Iranians did was jam the GPS
frequencies, which is a much more believable attack, then the questions
get more pointed and less polite. After all, interfering with military
communications is as old as the telegraph, so I would have thought that
a military airborne vehicle would have some internal logic and inertial
navigation adequate to return it to friendly territory if it lost the
GPS signals.
Of course, the internals of the drones are highly classified, known only
to the defense contractors who are paid immense amounts of money to
manufacture them, to the Defense Department, and now to whomever has the
ante to buy the captured drone from Iran. Your tax dollars are at work,
creating jobs for hidden, anonymous, unaccountable people who don't have
to defend their design choices.
http://tinyurl.com/85j6wmc
--
Bill Horne
(Remove QRM from my email address to write to me directly)
Date: Sun, 15 Jan 2012 12:33:09 -0500
From: Bill Horne <bill@horneQRM.net>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: The Sovereign Keys Project
Message-ID: <4F130DD5.3060201@horne.net>
Bruce Schneier provided a link to the Electronic Frontier Foundation's
"Sovereign Keys Project".
From the high-level summary, there are three changes EFF is advocating:
1. Replace warnings about invalid certificates with automated attack
circumvention.
2. Giving web site owners the option of bypassing the existing
Certificate Authority-based Public Key Infrastructure (PKI)
bureaucracy.
3. Using decentralized key management and giving users new DNSSEC options.
This isn't the sort of thing that I think of as related to telecom, but
I realized that VoIP makes extensive use of TLS, and that makes this
relative. Not only will the existing Certificate Authorities oppose the
EFF's plan - after all, it breaks their rice bowl - but the various
governments who have been enjoying "Root Certificate" access to their
citizens' web transactions will need to find new ways to eavesdrop.
The most important thing to keep in mind while reading about the EFF's
plan is the security is an arms race: there is never going to be a
stable, predictable, long-term, low cost procedure for securing data.
Schneier pointed out long ago that when data is valuable enough to get a
government involved, other methods and possibilities come into the
picture, up to and including "rubber hose cryptography". It's
counterproductive to depend on any one method.
Bill
--
Bill Horne
(Remove QRM from my email address to write to me directly)
Date: Sun, 15 Jan 2012 16:15:48 -0500
From: Bill Horne <bill@horneQRM.net>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Falcone Meets With FCC About LightSquared
Message-ID: <20120115211548.GA5798@telecom.csail.mit.edu>
I got this from DSLREPORTS, via a link in the Cybertelecom-L list.
Hoping to Expedite Government Approval Process
by Karl Bode Thursday 12-Jan-2012
LightSquared's primary backer, hedge fund billionaire Philip Falcone,
last week met with FCC officials in the hopes of expediting government
approval of the LightSquared network in the face of continued
political opposition and concerns about GPS interference. "We
discussed various alternative technical solutions that will
effectively and economically allow GPS devices to work as intended,
and still allow the deployment of the LightSquared network," the
company said in a filing. Recently things have started looking more
troubled for LightSquared, with the company running out of money and
primary financial backer Phillip Falcone facing a potential SEC
investigation for securities fraud.
http://tinyurl.com/73r8y5h
--
Bill Horne
(Remove QRM from my email address to write to me directly)
Date: Sun, 15 Jan 2012 21:07:14 +0000 (UTC)
From: danny burstein <dannyb@panix.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: Ringing Finally Ended, but There's No Button to
Message-ID: <jevf62$hsr$2@reader1.panix.com>
[snipppp.... concert attendee who couldn't turn off his iPhone's alarm]
- this brings up the very annoying and related issue that there
ain't no way to take out the iPhone battery.
--
_____________________________________________________
Knowledge may be power, but communications is the key
dannyb@panix.com
[to foil spammers, my address has been double rot-13 encoded]
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