North Point Solution

[gpflepsen]

What's this North Point Solution people have mentioned from time to time here on the forum?

[Greg Bimson]

Northpoint is currently an idea. The idea is to build towers (like transmitter towers), and transmit in a southerly direction. These transmitters would use the current DBS frequencies. However, instead of a dish pointing towards the south, this would be more like an antenna pointing north (hence, Northpoint).

Bidding for the licenses is to start later this year. For some reason, Northpoint felt they could snag them for free. This auction will not be pretty.

[waydwolf]

    It involves MVDDS which to cut to the chase is about sharing the electromagnetic spectrum between 12.2Ghz and 12.7Ghz with terrestrial wireless providers. It is presently used by DBS providers from satellite to dish at which point the 500Mhz-wide band is downconverted to 950Mhz-1450Mhz.

    The DBS industry, as well as their idiot redhead stepchild the SBCA, are b*tching and moaning as if the FCC just promised to sell their kids into slavery and rape their wives. Dire predictions of the end of DBS are being made all about with nary a care, probably because DirecTV and Dish Network want to finish off and bury DBS by their own incompetence and by golly, no one is going to help them do it.

    Those who remember the C-Band big dish heyday and installed said dishes, remember all too well the concept of TI, or Terrestrial Interferrence. Any competent cable technician understands the analog in their field, ingress. In dish siting, you minimize it by using existing terrain and buildings and whatnot as cover between your dish and the TI. In cable, you do good cabling work. In satellite, well, satellite techs are largely clueless as to ingress sources from 950Mhz to 1450Mhz and beyond that to 2Ghz+ where stacked and Dish Pro installations are concerned.

    Of course, the DBS industry is sh*tting bricks because something like 99 out of 100 installers are under 25, have the relative reasoning capacity of someone hit repeatedly with a tire iron, and thus are not likely to understand how to look for TI(when MVDDS is running full steam, the meters and compasses used for peaking today as well as the dish and LNB being installed will suffice for a rough fix on the source of interference).

    I am all for it as myself and those I respect in the business(and they know who they are since I've let them eat so much of my money) can easily manage around it. Those who can't will screw up installs left and right and will be out of the industry pretty darn quick for incompetence and that can't come a moment too soon.

    Of course, there's the point of 500Mhz of that microwave band being very useful to next generation wireless data, voice, and video services and it being very wrong to sacrifice it on the altar of a faltering industry whose primary selling point is based on comparisons to a cable industry of twenty years ago.

    And yeah, I am a DBS installer so a part of my income rides on them, thus I have every right to give them the dressing down they deserve for screwing the whole thing up continually. When an installer who upsells a $150 tripod and mast mount on the peak of the roof of a home with clear line of sight from ground level EVERYWHERE around the house is thought of as a "smart guy" you know something is wrong. When he compounds that con artistry with another $300 upsell of an unneeded sixteen port Spaun switch when the customer has TWO bedrooms and ONE livingroom and ONE receiver, you tend to get a little nauseous. And angry. 

    The industry's attitude has been at best one of "tsk, tsk". Such a startling lack of ethics is incompatible with their goal of providing better cable than cable.
  

  

 

[gpflepsen]

Thanks Wolf, don't hold back:)

So, the reason is to lessen the cost of multimillion dollar satellites and the associated launch/operation expences, correct? Is a secondary reason to afford service to those with poor southern exposures?

(My current understanding is...) DBS frequencies are line of sight and realy have no terrain following caracteristics. This North Point solution would need a network of towers with directional antennas. The coverage area would be small enough that many many towers would be needed for large scale coverage. The number of people with obstructed low elevation northern exposure would be a multiple of those suffering from poor southern exposure.