Yep, just set your Wi-Fi routers to use 6GHD and trample all over the other people in the band until they figure out that they can’t control it.
Next they are gonna take away amateur radio frequencies so it would be illegal to communicate outside of the internet.
Then its very easy to do censorship, just turn off power to ISPs and its information blackout.
For what it’s worth, I think Cruz’s proposal (all of it) was defeated 99-1.
This would need like a Canadian or Mexican to help provide the internet from across the border, because if they pull the Iran style blackout there will be zero internet for the entire country.
Meshenger app and mesh networks would still work, back to the BBS times we go
I mean, does anyone actually communicate on the ham bands? HF is for contesting and contesting only, 2 meters is for “checking in and out” on ragchew nets, 70cm is 2m again except half the range, 220 is hipster 2 meter, and I’ve never been given a reason to even think about 33cm and above. You’re more likely to find discussion about Icom vs Yaesu’s incompatible 2 meter digital things than high UHF.
Most actual communication is illegal on the ham bands one way or another so…I haven’t renewed my license.
Most actual communication is illegal on the ham bands one way or another
Except in case of emergency, natural disaster, etc. Before we carried cell phones, I had ham handhelds that we would talk directly to each other on 70cm for the usual “Hi honey, I’m on my way home” or… in the days before cell phone lots existed at airports, I’d call her on the handheld to let her know I was approaching the passenger drop-off/pickup area at the airport after a flight so she could start going there from whatever makeshift staging area she was in.
Anyway, when we would be out in the woods, we could reach each other roughly 1/2 mile like that from handheld to handheld, but if we ever had a serious problem we could switch to 2m and hit the local repeater which would get us more like 12 miles of range and coverage all the way into town where there was usually somebody who could make a 911 call if we needed it.
So, yeah, we have cell phones today, and they work when they work, but I find that when the cell phones don’t work (like during / after a hurricane) the ham bands generally are working - or at least are restored quicker, and nobody is going to press charges for emergency communications on the ham bands.
If you want to use the ham band for instacart dispatch coordination, yeah, you’re gonna get more than static about that.
I lost power and water for several days following a hurricane. No internet and no cell signal.
A dual band HT was our only way to learn what was happening across the city and in our neighborhood. It was a lifeline. I’ve got a bigger mobile unit set up now with a better antenna. Easy thing to keep on hand for the next zombie attack.
I live in Appalachia and people here regularly use ham for weather reports but that’s about it. If there was an actual emergency I assume that would be sent out as well.
I thought about getting a ham license so are you telling me there is really no need?
If you intend to practice the hobby, get the license. I let mine lapse after 10 years because I don’t practice anymore, but I generally still remember the basic rules and how to operate the gear, so if I ever had an emergency need I’d use what I had access to - but I haven’t transmitted anything in years and years.
You don’t need one if there’s an emergency, civil unrest would probably qualify as an emergency so non-licensed people can legally transmit.
The FCC hasn’t really punished anyone for not having a license other than those that are really bothersome/disruptive or are doing jamming. But like, if there’s civil unrest, the laws probably don’t matter anymore so you can just ignore the law.
But if you don’t have a license, you don’t have a callsign, and thus others will refuse to talk to you during non-emergency peacetime.
Get into ham radio if you like radios, that’s pretty much the only topic you’ll find on the air.
This guy’s full of shit. You can talk all you want on the HF bands, they’re certainly not exclusively for contesting. You can do Morse code or digital modes too. The “most actual communication is illegal on ham bands” thing is wrong too, you can talk about pretty much anything you want as long as it’s not “obscene or profane,” according to the FCC.
It’s illegal to transmit music, it’s illegal to transmit anything encrypted unless you’re controlling a satellite, it’s illegal to transmit anything for commercial purposes, and it’s actually illegal to transmit anything on a regular basis that could reasonably be communicated some other way.
It’s illegal to transmit music
True, for obvious reasons
it’s illegal to transmit anything encrypted unless you’re controlling a satellite
True, it helps to ensure nothing illegal is going on and enforce keeping commercial interests out. It’s a self regulating space, one of the only cases I know of that tends to work due to there being no monetary interests allowed. The point is to communicate information, not hide it.
it’s illegal to transmit anything for commercial purposes.
True, the whole point is to keep commercial interests out. That’s what “amateur” means.
illegal to transmit anything on a regular basis that could reasonably be communicated some other way.
False. This is for something like a non-profit wanting to use radios for their operations, they should be steered toward another service like gmrs, FRS, murs, etc. instead of amateur radio.
I call bs on the encryption part too. You just need to publicly post the key for your encryption and say you’re not trying to hide what you’re saying.
I haven’t seen any regulations saying where you need to publicly post the key.
I say license up now and learn it how the shit works. Never know when some “pirate” stations may be needed.
There’s a difference between encryption and encoding, and that difference is intent.
Encoding is the process of imparting a digital message onto the radio carrier. A simple example is Morse code; transmitted by keying a continuous wave on and off in pre-determined patterns of long and short pulses with long and short gaps between. Frequency shift keying and bodot code are the encoding scheme behind RTTY, etc. Hams are permitted to experiment with novel encoding schemes, and have invented a few, PSK31 comes to mind, a phase shift keying standard designed to use commonly available PC sound cards as a modem.
Encryption is the process of obscuring the message for all but the intended recipient. There is one specific case the law calls out when this is permissible in Amateur radio service, and that’s control signals of Amateur radio satellites. A novel encoding scheme, like making up your own alphabet instead of the standard Morse one, or ciphers of any kind that are intended to make the message secret, is illegal.
It’s not uncommon to hear encrypted communiques on the ham bands; I’ve picked them up myself. You want a fun rabbit hole to fall down, look up numbers stations. Some serious cold war james bond bullshit.
I don’t believe it is legal to send a PGP encrypted message over the air (on ham radio, go ahead and send it over Wi-Fi, you can encrypt the shit out of that) even if you’ve posted your private key on your website. What would even be the point of that? tilts head It might be legal to send a PGP signed message over ham radio; if I understand correctly that’s basically a checksum that can guarantee the sender’s possession of a private key.
Over here in Germany encryption is most definitely illegal. This includes encoded messages only the intended recipient could decode.
A HAM license realistically is for two things:
1 the test teaches you major items you should know about how radio works 2 how to not fuck shit up for everyone else
For the bands allocated to HAM radio in the US, as long as you’re not fucking shit up for everyone else the FCC doesn’t really care. A good example of that and my personal favorite rule is the power transmission rule of “only enough power to complete the transmission”. Functionally it’s so vague that I doubt anyone would ever actually get their license suspended over it.
The group
AFRLARRL has a pretty restrictive “band plan” that I think is where the above comment’s salt is coming from. A perception I have and have heard others talk about is the HAM community has a tendency to be borderline hostile to newcomers and are very gate-keepy, which ARRL in my experience embodies.I have a license purely to play by the rules from a legal standpoint when I’m out in the rocky mountains hiking and camping with friends, makes communicating with different groups way easier
Edit: formatting, typoing ARRL
Do you mean ARRL?
I agree their bandplan is pretty restricty, but it’s also not law. It’s more for playing nice with each other. Keep high power up here so it doesn’t wipe out the people playing with low power, digital here so they don’t get overrun by voice, etc. You wouldn’t have any idea you’re stepping on someone sending Morse if you’re on FM. So there’s reason for it.
And yeah, with line of sight radios, nobody gives two shits 20 miles from civilization in the woods.
Lol whoops yeah, ARRL. I work in aerospace where we love our alphabet soup and I brainfarted AFRL.
I wasn’t trying to say that the band plan doesn’t exist for a reason, it absolutely does, some reasons which you pointed out exactly. I’ve definitely been around guys who treat the band plan like it is the law, and I imagine the original commenter had the misfortune of running into one of those guys and believed him at face value. Imho it’s one of the reasons ham radio has been dying as a hobby.
So am I able to goof around on the radio till I get my license or do I really need to have my license first?
Nothing legally stops you from listening. To transmit, you are legally required to have a callsign (which you must broadcast during transmit) and your callsign must be licensed for that frequency.
If you break the law, it’s highly unlikely that the FCC themselves will hunt you down and fine you. If you’re using it to talk to others on the HAM bands, they’ll likely get pissed at you for not being licensed but actually tracking you down is difficult. Using it for your own personal projects, friend groups, etc, it’s unlikely anyone would notice you at all.
A license is like $15 for life (just need to occasionally tell the FCC you’re still alive), the test will teach you some stuff, I don’t see it as that onerous to play by the rules so I’d recommend following them.
It’s illegal to push that button until you’re licensed.
(No one will search you out if you’re not being annoying)
Its always Cruz.
Rat Bastard Rafael Cruz
Well whoever ends up buying that band is in for a load of shit because I and a lot of other people are NOT going to stop using 6GHz WiFi
Same thing with Meshtastic. Go ahead and see just how much you’ll waste your money.
What do you mean by same thing with Meshtastic, are they trying to sell spectrum around 900mHz too?
IDK I heard something about it. I think it may have been the 866 MHz one?
Yup, the band is already littered with 6g devices. It’d be a stupid purchase.
But also, 6GHz is somewhat of a useless band for carriers. It’s high enough frequency that it’ll get absorbed by most things yet low enough frequency that it’ll struggle to really carry a whole lot of data.
It’s a bad band for cellular. It’s short-range and shit at penetration.
It’s really not even that good for wifi unless you’re close or have a mesh network with APs all over the building.
Because of its shortcomings as a communication bandwidth, it’s really, really good at cell-based positioning.
mesh network
Or traditional network with Ethernet backhaul and lots of access points. I really wish mesh networks would die off honestly.
Like anything else, they have their place. But they’ve been shoved into use cases they dont fit as well.
Sometimes re-wiring a house or building isn’t as practical as setting up a mesh network that’s good-enough.
Mesh should be an option of last resort. It reduces the speed and increases the latency quite a bit. The only thing worse is power line networking, which has the side effect of turning your whole house into an RF jammer.
The cell carriers don’t need more bandwith. 5G is already quite fast with the existing allocations. The only times I’ve used 5G and thought it’s too slow has been in rural areas where the issue is a lack of nearby cell towers, not a lack of bandwidth. The cell carriers already have loads of millimeter wave bandwidth available for use in densely packed, urban areas where the lower frequency bands are insufficient.
It’s WiFi that should be getting more bandwidth. Home internet connections keep getting faster. Multi gigabit speeds are now common in areas with fiber.
and on top of that, 5G afaik is specifically made so that if you need more density, you can turn down the cell power and install more cell sites rather than take more spectrum
it was designed for venues like sports stadiums so you could keep installing more and more cell towers inside stadiums etc to accommodate huge crowds
This exactly. Wifi is damn near unusable in dense residential settings. It’ll cut it for streaming and web browsing, but much more than that and you’ll feel the pain of interference from all the other wifi APs in the area.
Especially with most of them defaulting to 80MHz on 5GHz and many of those defaulting away from UNII-2. which leaves 4 non-overlapping channels (with one of them giving trouble with a lot of devices). We’re right back to where we were in 2.4. Even worse, I think, since wifi is more ubiquitous.
So if I’m reading this right… wired Internet providers are against this due to home Wi-Fi Internet speeds and phone providers are for this for mobile speeds/bandwidth?
I don’t know how I feel about this as I currently have T-Mobile home Internet and it’s not the best experience… but it mostly works and it’s cheaper than my previous cable provider. However, home Wi-Fi really needs 6 GHz for future IoT devices.
But I am definitely against it because Ted Cruz is for it. He obviously is getting paid/bribed by the telecoms… and he sucks.
Eh, IoT devices typically use 2.4ghz, or even 933mhz…
Yeah IoT devices don’t need bandwith, they need range (at low powers) and those lower frequencies get them that. 6ghz wifi has pretty small range and is awful for IoT stuff.
Right, I figured they meant in order to make room. There’s too much cluttering 2.4 — zigbee, zwave, bluetooth, IO peripherals, microwave ovens, cordless handsets, walkies, and more. WRT general WiFi traffic, in dense residential settings 2.4 is often only used for initial client device handshake.
I kinda meant for like future products when AR and VR combine with IoT products, but if those can work on lower ranges with those 6 Ghz devices, then great… but VR and AR will definitely need 6 GHz to be more useful.
I thought wifi was on 2.4ghz, and the new ones were on 5ghz?
Current generation wifi 6E and 7 add 6Ghz which offers substantially more bandwidth / speed.
Wifi 7 also allows devices to use 2.4/5/6Ghz at the same time instead of just hard switching between them.
Would be a major setback since 6Ghz allows devices to easily hit Gigabit speeds wirelessly.
Yeah, I’ve got Wifi 7 set up and it’s awesome. I’ve got a single access point, and I get full gigabit in my office with line of sight, and it auto switches to 5GHz or 2.4GHz when I move too far away. It’s also great for apartments since it’s more easily blocked by walls, there’s way less interference from neighbors.
Nah wifi was actually originally on 5GHz spectrum, with 802.11a. It came out shortly before 802.11b, which used 2.4GHz, and was objectively better…but component shortages for 802.11a devices made the inferior 802.11b more successful on the market.
Then in 2009, after 802.11b and 802.11g came 802.11n, which used the 5GHz spectrum, and introduced dual-band routers to consumers.
Most recently, 6GHz got allocated with the advent of Wifi 6E and Wifi 7.
802.11a is over 20 years old, fortunately this law isn’t talking about shutting down existing routers. the 6 GHZ is the next frontier to expand to, the military already owns the 7 GHZ spectrum… So the 6 GHZ is the one that can be expanded into. Of which origionally was planned to be made for the next generation of wifi… but now is going to be sold off to phone providers to use in the next generation of mobile networks.
So in short, our existing routers will continue to work as designed, but future routers will not be making any leaps forward.
Basically the choice between better faster wireless LANs, is getting killed in favor of better networks for cellphone services… of which the carriers will set the price on.
6GHz compatible devices are already being sold. If your phone is new-ish it likely supports it, and many routers already have it.
This isn’t a “next gen” problem, it’s a “current gen bleeding edge” problem.
I have been using 6ghz for about a year or so now and I found it to be quite fast. MLO can be super weird sometimes and seems to get confused, but it works. (It’s probably just a driver I haven’t updated.)
802.11a was 5ghz, 802.11b was 2.4ghz. Both developed at the same time.
802.11g was 2.4ghz and extended b since 2.4 took off faster than 5ghz in the market.
Since g, n onwards has been used across both bands.
Since 802.11ax we now have 6ghz.
WiFi is on all three bands. It’s not so much what’s newer vs older. Newer devices tend to support 2.4, 5, and 6 and switch between them based on quality of signal and support by the WiFi network. Higher frequencies like 5 and 6GHz are generally better because there’s less interference.
Cheaper devices tend to only support 2.4GHz
Youre right, 6ghz was the next one being added
