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Apple Businesses

No AirPort for the French? 151

Posted by Roblimo from the localization-is-more-than-doc-translation dept.
First Person writes "Following on the heels of the Apple 'Lethal Weapon G4' ads, the French military may prevent Apple'sAirPort wireless system from being sold in France. According to this article, the 2.4-GHz frequency is reserved for the army. Equipment broadcasting at that frequency may therefore damage or be damaged by military hardware. As wireless systems start to proliferate, these conflicts should become increasingly common." (The article's in French; perhaps utilize the Babelfish thing, eh?)
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No AirPort for the French? More

No AirPort for the French?

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  • Re:2.4 GHz? Hmmm... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    ...and very possibly weapons control systems. ;)

    I believe some communications systems run around that neighborhood too.

    The fun really starts when you get into electronic counter measures. One neat piece of offensive hardware is the HARM [fas.org] (Highspeed Anti-Radiation Missile). It's mission is to find a target (either handed off by an external system or via its own threat table), home in on that threat signal, and blow it up.

    The nasty thing is that if left to its own devices, the HARM doesn't always pick good targets. There's been reports of near-misses when a HARM targeted friendly comms gear. Oops.

    OK. So your new AirPort probably won't attract HARMs anytime soon. But it is interesting to see the civilian world once again encrouch on territory that used to be the sole concern of the military.

  • ISM band 2.4GHz (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Hello,
    2.4 GHz is in the ISM band (Industrial Scientific & Medical).
    The European standard of radio frequency say you can use ISM band as long as respect the protocol. (802.11)
    If France doesn't want, you can make a request to a European court...

    Alex
    adulau@be.linux.org

  • Re:New World Order! Head for the hills! (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    American sovereignty was decreed by GOD and by NO OTHER. It is not within your authority, nor that of the traitorous United States "Government" infesting Washington, to abrogate American sovereignty by subordinating it to illegal international treaties which are designed to put the United States military DIRECTLY under the control of GENERAL BOUTROS BOUTROS GALI.

    B.B.G. is no longer Sec. General. That's Kofi Annan. Idiot. Try cutting-and-pasting from an up to date page the next time you're browsing the KKK's web site.

  • Re:2.4 GHz? Hmmm... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    No, it's 2.2-something GHz.

  • Re:Translated (and cleaned up) (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Here... This should put you english speakers at ease: the article translated and cleaned up for American English:
    ----
    The Apple iBook encroaches on frequencies of the French Army

    PARIS (AFP) - 24 Sep 99 - The new portable computer by Apple, the iBook, poses risks problems with the Frency Army: It will indeed use the 2.4Ghz frequency for reception of wireless Internet access, reserved in France for the use of the army, except with authorization, as reported by CNRS "Internet Actu" on Friday.

    Apart from 300 large French cities, where the authorization will be secured within one month, any user of the device in the 2.4Ghz frequency must request an authorization from ART (Authority of Regulation of Telecommunications). ART forwards the request to the national military office, as confirmed by ART with rear-admiral Jaques Bizard, head of the military office.

    Up until now, ART and the army had granted only a few hundred authorizations to users of these frequencies. "Last year, we received 500 requests for authorization, including 195 sent to the army," explained ART. Genenrally, they are companies which operate radioelectric networks making it possible for computers to communicate wirelessly.

    "In general, there is no reason to say no," added the rear-admiral Bizard, "but they are localized networks. On the other hand, the iBook is light and portable," explained the soldier.

    The case of a portable computer is obviously not envisioned by the law, since the requests for authorization must "be accompanied by a plan of the establishment considered, making it possible to precisely locate the site of the estabilishment within the area concerned," explains the authorization form used by ART.

    A device using the 2.4Ghz frequency can scramble a device used by the army, or vice versa. "Contrary to other countries in Europe which do not have this constraint, in France this frequency band is military. Apple probably did not think of here, but we will not allow all our devices to break because the iBook arrived," said admiral Brizzard.

    "The problem was not considered long enough," he added. For the moment, the admiral is only seeing about 10 requests per week, but it is likely to grow if the iBook is a success. On the other side, the person in charge of marketing for Apple France, Hughes Asseman, remains calm, by reminding us that the range of the iBook does not exceed 50 meteres and should not pose a problem for authorization.

    "To receive the Internet wirelessly, the iBook communicates with a terminal, the AirPort, connected to a telephone or by cable, with a radius of 50 meteres. Unless it is on a military HQ (base -ed), that cannot pose a problem," commented Hughes Asseman. "We have no concerns about marketing."

    "We will have to examine the design features of the device, such as checking that the range does not exceed 50 meters," concluded the military national office of the frequencies.

    The requests for authorization will, in any case, have to be sent individually by each holder of an iBook using the AirPort terminal, which will be officially launched by mid-October.

    To violate this law involves the risk of imprisonment for up to 6 months and a fine of 200.000 francs, noted ART.

  • The bomb icon. (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Boy, that will add real multimedia effects to the bomb icon.

    A real fatal error.

    Now where did I leave my WinNuke program?

    Real heavy duty ping of death.

    Bill Silverstein [sorehands.com]

  • ..and most of the other IEEE802.11 systems (such as Lucent Wavelan/IEEE) have omnidirectional ranges greatly exceeding 60m, causing a bigger
    problem than the iBooks.
  • Macnn.com is reporting that there is a $30,000 fine for using AirPort in France. Will this apply to all wireless networks like Dell's new AeroNet?

    Will the French drive around in little vans with DF'ing for laptops?
  • So you can't buy 2.4 GHz cordless phones in France either? I'm going out to buy one today. As for raditation against the 'nads...the antennia are in the lid of the laptop.

    As for the poster that suggested the UN run the whole broadcast band. Thats something that is way outside of the UN charter.
  • Microwaves do operate in the 2.4Ghz range - stick a Breezecom Wireless unit beside a microwave and you'll have a fun time with an intermittent network connection. Some TV stations also broadcast their feeds in the 2.4GHz range, though its supposedly a free for public use frequency range. Look for the next set of wireless phones to go into the 2.4GHz range as well (up from 900MHz). Its getting cluttered and some of the new 10Mb+ wireless networking equipment is jumping up into the 5GHz range somewhere.
  • Bluetooth in France (and Spain) operates on only a subset of the channels (22 versus 78) it can work on most elsewhere. (Europe/USA 2.4-2.4835GHz, Spain 2.445-2475GHz, France 2.4465-2.4835GHz, Japan 2.471-2.497GHz)

    (These figures come from the Bluetooth specs!)

    So it's not just France!
  • I wonder if it's time for the FCC to relinquish control of the broadcast spectrum to the UN or some other similar international agency? Or maybe, an ISO standard for frequency allocations.


    Sounds like a job for the International Telecommunication Union [itu.int]. There's some info about wireless network access here [itu.int], though I'm not familiar with the details of any of this.


  • It sounds like the Brazilian airlines are using peoples need for electronics to drum up more of the cost effective first class sales. In general electronic equipment is banned during take off and landings. Electronic devices wouldn't be a problem, not even if everybody carried a cornocopia of them, but segments of the airplane itself act as wave guides. Most airplanes were designed 20 or 30 years ago when a 4 transistor radio was the latest high tech portable device. Some of the channels conduct energy to places you really don't want a lot of interference during takeoff and landing.
  • It's just good old RF gluttony. The French military has those frequencies, and there's no incentive to give them back. Like anything governmental in nature, they've decided to air on the side of caution simply because they can. I presume if Apple was willing to pay a hefty chunk of change they could buy that frequency, much like the FCC is auctioning off your airwaves right now. Wouldn't that be interesting: Apple with an monopoly on all 802.11 networking devices in the entire country.
  • So *that's* how they defeated the alien ship in Inependence Day"!
    But seriously folks, this is why the FCC was insane to sell (rather than lease) various frequencies (I liken it to selling National Parks, they aren't replaceable or interchangeable). You never know when a new, more important use for a particular frequency band will come along.

  • I think you'll find that the gaps in the VHF TV band (between 4 and 5 and between 6 and 7) are due to the pre-existance of other services on those frequencies.
  • Hey I remember you from when I brought up the idea of a UN-sponsored internet regulatory body! :-)
    --
    -- Chris Dunham -- chameleo@xcelco.on.ca -- Chameleon --
  • At the risk of purpetuating this previously AC-only thread, I'd just like to point out that the "joke country" of the world and the "joke country" of the US may differ somewhat...
    --
    -- Chris Dunham -- chameleo@xcelco.on.ca -- Chameleon --

  • Actually, there is anedotal evidence of this on some types of aircraft. The regulations have been adopted by the airlines only in the last couple years - not 50 years ago as you suggest. You are correct that shielding against this type of interference would be simple, but I have heard a better argument for their ban: they distract passengers who might miss something importaint that the flight crew says, like, "We're going to crash!" And the cell phone ban was pushed by the FCC not because they mess with aircraft avionics (although I wouldn't want some cheap piece of consumer electonics that was designed to broadcast on any plane I was in), but because they really f*ck up the cell network on the ground (b/c they're recieved by so many cells at once).


    -"Zow"

  • ---------------------
    "Apple's iBook impinges on the French Army's frequencies."
    Paris (AFP) Fri 24 Sep 99,
    ===========================
    Think of all those annoying messages popping up on the screen....

    [iBook/]> We_Surrender
    command not found

    DonC.
  • Pardon my ignorance on the matter, but I was always taught that EM radiation has *amplitude* AND *frequency* modulations -- presumably one can exponentially increase the amount of available 'frequencies' if one has a receiver that measures frequencies *and* amplitude modulation?

  • Isn't that the frequency used by microwave ovens?

    --
  • It should be noted that Apple (and others such as AT+T/Lucent) had to go through a very long FCC petition process to get a slice of spectrum allocated for wireless networking in the US. It should be no suprise that the bureaucracy just as cumbersome elsewhere.

    One reference I found:
    http://x36.deja.com/getdoc.xp?AN=212899830&CONTE XT=938276998.1936523279&hitnum=28
    (Note that I'm not sure if this is the same spectrum as IEEE 802.11/Airport)
  • The frequency used with Airport is an European standard which was signed by al EG member states inluding France.
    We had the same problem here in The Netherlands three years ago.
    The problems is that a goverment can't forbid use of those frequencies because it is a European standard.
    And they signed them!!!
  • What in the world does the French language have to do with any of this? Blaming the decision of the French miitary on French language or culture is absolutely moronic.
  • Let us pause and consider...

    The French army travels all over the world. All these 'peacekeeping' missions of the UN and whatnot else means there will be problems with ibooks in these places.

    Either that, or Apple has invented a new form of suppressive fire for La Leigionne Etranger.
  • 2.4ghz is an unlicensed band being used by everything from wireless video(x10 stuff) to to those new 2.4ghz phones. Bluetooth(the new laptop tech to replace irda) also uses 2.4ghz. As someone else pointed out, so do microwave ovens, one of the big reasons it is unlicensed. You will start to see a lot more products using 2.4ghz, 1) because of the the number of open frequencies and 2) because of the range. The french werent very smart when they chose that frequency range because a leaky microwave causes hell to these devices.
  • While it don't think it would affect tissues directly since it's not ionizing radiation, aren't some pacemakers really sensitive to microwaves?

  • The history of telecommunications in France is truly bizarre, For example, for many years the French govenrment banned the installation of a telephone system, favoring instead the use of semaphore towers(!). France was the last western european country to set up a telephone system.
  • The best thing a flight attendent ever asked was if my laptop had memory. I said yes, so she said I couldn't use it during the entire flight. I insisted that it had nothing to do, but she insisted too that I couldn't use it.

    Also, I remember Delta saying that you could use your laptop during the flight, but you couldn't use anything that you would connect to it. So if you had some external trackball, you couldn't use it...

    weird.

    Maan
  • I don't see why Apple doesn't just get AirPort's radio manufacture to sell them some radios that work on another frequency. GSM cell phones by default work at 900 Mhz (but they're also availble in 1800 Mhz), but as many Americans know, 900 Mhz has been allocated for wireless phones (the non-cellular kind). So digital cell phones use 1900 Mhz in the US.

    Sure certain frequencies are better for something
    than others (You don't build cell phones to work
    on visible light. I mean you don't want to blind a 10 mile radius from the cell tower/strobe light now do you? :) (Oh yeah, and you wouldn't be able to use your phone during the day, but that might not be a bad thing.)). But I can't imagine that 2.4 Ghz is the only frequency you can use for wireless data in the home.
  • ok, well, lemme see... The FCC was designed to allocate the airwaves, nothing more, if they give that right to an international organization, then they are done. They do all that censorship crap too, however, they can only do that by leveraging the fact that they can take away your broadcast rights (MicrosoFCC, anyone?)
  • Actually, current airliners are safety nightmares. And what passes for safety "precautions" are ludicrous. According to the link below, flaoting seat cushions have been used *once* and have not been proven to save lives.

    The link celow has some good information, but is not academically rigorous (to say the least) in its presentation. (Honestly, this is why I'm posting this as AC...)

    Also, it should not be visited by conspiracy buffs, because at times, the owners of this site drop into "they're out to get us all" mode.

    Still there's some very interesting stuff here: www.aircrash.org [aircrash.org]
  • This is actually one of the cool things about
    Bluetooth. They did their homework and chose a
    frequency band that was available for consumer electronics nearly
    everywhere, and actually built some frequency
    switching into the design so that it could be used
    worldwide.
  • Didn't somone save the world with an Apple laptop in "Independence Day"? Maybe you're onto something here...
  • Many fellow geeks are probably as annoyed as I am when the airlines tell you to turn your laptop, cdplay, etc off during takeoff and landing.

    Nah, I don't mind. That's my favorite time for watching out the window.

  • Sorry that was redundant. I searched for "independence" but the other post misspelled it.

    To repent, I'll add my joke that suggests that Apple will have to do some big-time lobbying in France to get their products approved. You know those commercials with Jeff Goldblum rambling on about getting on the internet and how life is so cool afterwards? Now imagine Jerry Lewis doing that same thing.

    I also want to know if they will have to change the name to the moiLivre to get it approved by the Francophone society...

  • Any guesses if French Mac lovers will be able to do something about this as the iBook ships en masse?

    You have to remember that the AirPort card is an optional card, not part of the motherboard itself. If all else fails, Apple simply won't ship the iBooks or G4 desktops with AirPort cards.

    And rumor has it that Apple is working on an AirPort base station with more oomph. I've heard 150m (~~450 feet) plus.


  • Yes, you can have multiple base stations. What's also ginchy is that any Mac with an airport card in it can act as a base station. Also cool, you can create a "spread" of AirPort receivers, placing them about 275 feet apart. As you move around the spread, the AirPort card will automatically switch between base stations. (Kinda' like cell phones.)

    I think you're wrong, though, with the numbers... I want to say one AirPort base station can support ten or fifteen devices
  • The FCC was designed to allocate the airwaves, nothing more, if they give that right to an international organization, then they are done. They do all that censorship crap too, however, they can only do that by leveraging the fact that they can take away your broadcast rights (MicrosoFCC, anyone?)

    But I wonder, though I figure I also know the answer, does the FCC get bribed about allocating airwaves? Couldn't they? (of course they could)
    But I guess the thing to consider is that, if they relinquised their rights to allocate/control over the airwaves (or rather, over US airwaves) to another organization, that organization would be under pressure as well. Esp if control of airwaves was allocated to an nation-neutral (re: international) organization, that organization would be open to even more pressure, as corporations in each nation would want control over certain frequencies, as in a case like this one, which pits Apple against the military of France... in which case, of course, France's military wins. One would (at least, I would) assume that in all or nearly all cases of corporation vs. gov't, the gov't would win simply because they're the ones-in-charge. ... But would that always be a good thing? Bribery/blackmail/beauracracy/corruption could just as easily infest such an international organization, and then where would we be? Broadcasting all over the place, disrupting walkie-talkies, military communication, pacemakers, etc etc....

    Do we want this? What are your thoughts?

  • Many fellow geeks are probably as annoyed as I am when the airlines tell you to turn your laptop, cdplay, etc off during takeoff and landing...

    When you consider how airplanes use radio waves to determine position, you may not mind shutting off your laptop.

    The instrument landing system consists of two antennas in the middle of the runway to center the airplane over the runway(Localizer) and two antennas at the end of the runway to put the airplane in the right angle of descent (glideslope). These antennas put out analog signals at fixed signal strength and frequencies. The antennas on the airplane are generally located on the centerline of the airplane close to the landing gear (At least as far as I can remember) The Avionic systems onboard the airplane detect their location relative to the ground antennas by comparing signal strength. If the signal from the left side of the runway is much weaker than the signal from the antenna on the right side of the runway, the pilot knows he must move the airplane slightly to the right.

    Now consider the Geek flying coach class with his plexyglass cased laptop. If the one of the antennas picks up a noisey Cyrix processor from his laptop, it might add noise in the same frequency range of one of the localizer antennas. The pilot thought he was centered on the runway, but the Instrument Landing Systems seem to indicate that he should make a slight turn to the left

    Opps!! He landed on concourse instead of the runway!! CALL CNN.


  • But perhaps the simplest answer is to have the machines be programmable to use different frequencies which can be assigned and changed via software. ....

    Can you see the newly created class of hated hardware? Win Transmitters

  • Warnings:

    who is likely to forget how to inflate a fucking life jacket? When they are flying over land?

    Life jackets:

    Yes, it has happened that airplanes went down in water, but its a freak accident nowadays. The chances of not breaking a plane against the surface when landing (if a wing tip goes down first, the plane will flip and completely break) are very small.

    Seatbelts:

    I know that seatbelts in airplanes are for turbulance, not crashing. Any flight over the bay of bengal will convince of that.

    But all safety aside, wouldn't it be nicer if they rolled back in your seat??

    Windows:

    Yes, it doesn't matter, but it illustrates my point.


    Its not that I am against doing anything for safety, I'm just saying that the current regulations are more or less the same ones created in the 1940s, and while some are good, all are very outdated.

    I don't agree about the photo id thing, we used to need photo IDs to take the subway here (they have non-personal cards now). Big deal.


    -
    /. is like a steer's horns, a point here, a point there and a lot of bull in between.
  • Well, yes/no
    The French have always been awkward abour RF, maritime radio is a good example. Try talking to French coastguard in anything other than French and see what happens (to their credit, in a mayday their English suddenly becomes perfect.) It used to be illegal to even transmit in any other language than French.
    I worked on a Radio system that had to work cross-channel (used in the tunnel), there were several major frequency allocation problems. And some fundamental differences, for instance in dual channel full duplex they use an inverted scheme, relative with the rest of Europe.
    Also they have not adopted the open(ish) TETRA standard (used for trunked radio services, fire/police/airport control, etc..) Instead they have Tetrapol, designed to protect Matra from competition from Nickia/Motorola/Ericcson etc..
    Basically it is all controlled by the French PTT, which is a vast, bloated, protectionist, beaurocratic Dinasaur. With it's brains in it's tail.
    To their credit, they did adopt GSM, It probably slipped through when they were looking the other way or something.
  • If they're travelling under command of UN/NATO then no, frequencies for joint operations are well defined, and french equip is designed for it.
    If on their own, they may have a problem, better fill the Greenpeace ships with Ibooks.

  • > The problem is that any device that uses digital logic, such as your CD player, may radiate at frequencies that interfere with communication and navigation systems. Your device may be a weak RF emitter but it is much closer to the aircraft's antenna than the transmitters the flight crew are monitoring.

    And if you're flying first class, your transmitter is even closer to the cockpit. So, shouldn't they allow second class passenger to use electronics, and forbid it in first class :-)

  • That will never happen. Selling radio frequencies (read: property held in the public domain) to the highest bidder (read: not you.) is a big moneymaker for the FCC.
  • I'm strongly suspicious, just as I am suspicious that using your laptop on the plane during takeoff will really cause it to crash. It can't be that easy.
  • Right on, I hate the french as much as the next American guy ;)
    --
  • Well, this could be a problem due to the fact that Airports were designed for use in (big suprise coming up) AIRPORTS, where there could be military trafic in the area.

    So, there you are, hapilly using your iBook, when a Mirage suddenly detects an unauthorised radiation emission. After notifying ATC, they detect it too... a radar emision in an airport. Terrorists? Maybe... Stinger missile? Maybe... So, the pilot gets authorisation to open fire... ah well, at leadt there's one less Mac user in the world...
  • Perhaps, judging by the recent rumours of Apple G4s having a rather interesting odour, all that needs to be done is to get a bunch, place them in line along the border, power 'em up, and hope for good wind! ;^)
  • Perhaps Transmeta will come to the rescue with instantly reconfigurable chips that optimize to the legal frequency of the country in question.

    Heck, perhaps Transmeta will just replace the UN and we can all sleep safer at night.

    TML
  • Folks,

    One of the reasons for the general use of the
    2.4Ghz band is that it is the resonant frequency
    of the water molecule. It is thus generally used
    by (unlicenced ..) Microwave ovens.

    For anyone to claim that a 100mW spread spectrum
    transmitter interferes with communication where
    a (shielded ..) 3kW domestic appliance does not
    is blowing smoke.

    Cheers, Andy!
  • Its says that the Airport supports up to four connections. I wonder if they you can have more than one to expand your network. That would be kinda cool having a whole buch of little flying saucers around the house with a serious wireless network.
  • Um . . . not exactly. Either that or the flight crew doesn't know what you've said. I've been on a number of flights where people around me have been using laptops, CD players, etc., and a flight attendant has asked that person to turn it off. Not to put it away, just to turn it off. I recall this starting a few years ago (early 90's) after somebody determined that signals from these devices MIGHT interfere with the signals that control the plane. Such interference, I would assume, is not a big deal in flight because small disruptions aren't a big deal when you're 30,000 feet up, but when you're 10 feet off the ground and flying at a few hundred miles per hour a small disruption can cause serious problems.


    andy
  • With all these conflicts we're going to have to move to increasingly futuristic technologies like laserbeams, flashing lights, dials, and laptops that communicate by shooting a beam of light that makes an oscillating "EeEeEeEeEeEeEeEe" sound.
    Eventually, no matter how corny we think they are now, we're going to catch up to the tech shown in the movies of the '60s and '70s. Just you wait and see.
    I can't wait 'til I issue the commands:
    Computer! Initiate self destruct sequence 123456!

    Maybe I shouldn't post right after watching "The Time Machine". Sorry.
  • President Clinton's laptop has probably been factored into the testing and evaluation done on the secured planes that he ever gets to ride on.

    When the certification testing was done on the 727s, 737s, and 747s, the only reasonable way to keep the testing from running into the billions of dollars was to limit the combinations of conditions that had to be tested against. And back then, there wasn't the expectation that every suit who walks onto the plane would be carrying a transmitter and a computer more powerful than the workstations used to design the plane. Anything that emits a significant amount of RF just had to be banned from the vulnerable zones around and in the aircraft. This is FAR more likely to include Cellphones than a well-designed laptop, of course. Cellphones by design radiate significant RF emissions.
  • I can see all the pot-bellied CB-Radio freaks now, figuring out how to hook linear amplifiers to their "AirPort"(tm) machines. Blasting Mac-this-n-that documents across the country, making TV screens ripple in response, and babies cry.

    Ten-four, good buddy... or whatever they say now...
  • You are assuming that all the antennas are concentrated up in the cockpit area of the plane.

    Clue: there are antennas and sensitive circuits up and down the chassis of the plane.

  • The International Telecommunication Union sets the standards for many types of communication equipment including international frequency allocation. The standards are discussed and agreed to by all members of the ITU. These include equipment manufacturers, PTTs and regulatory bodies throughout the world.

    For instance your modem will probably be using the V.90 standard which was a compromise between USRobotics and Rockwell proprietary standards.

    If I am right the FCC will attend ITU meetings on frequency allocation to try and convince the committees that their standards should be recommended as international standards to the rest of the world.

    However the ITU cannot enforce standards set throughout the world. It is up the members or the organization, like the FCC, to make certain that everyone follows what they agreed to at the ITU. If a member does not like a standard, or if it conflicts with some national standard they can easily ignore the international standard!

    That is the reason why international standards of this type either all bow to the lowest common denominator or contain exceptions or numerous different versions which are all allowed under the standard to keep everyone happy.

  • Humm so now everyone knows the freqs used by the French military....interesting
  • Look for the next set of wireless phones to go into the 2.4GHz range as well (up from 900MHz)

    there are, in fact, 2.4 GHz phones on the market.

  • The problem isn't really with the french military. In the 802.11 standard there are three specs for Europe. The European Telecomunications Standards Institute (ETSI) standard is for all of Europe except France and Spain, which each use a different standard. France's allocation specs aren't compatible with 802.11 B, the standard for the 11 megabit range the Airport uses, which became a standard last week. Also, there is the fact that, though in the US the 2.4 Gigahertz range spans 2.400 to 2.483, in France it is from 2.400 to 2.475. If there is any conflict with the military, it would be in the overlapping range.
  • The 5 Ghz standard exists. It is 802.11 A

  • Shouldn't have told the Germans (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    So the next time Germany decides to invade, all they need is a big pile of iBooks to totally block all communications, is that the idea?

  • Re:International Frequency Allocation (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Only when the companies can be bothered to pay for them. The most recent round of auctions had something like a 90% default rate. No one paid. They have to re-auction the frequencies. There are also apparently no penalties for defaulting on a bid. Anyone want to bid every frequency back into the stratosphere?
  • I don't know much about wireless communications. I'm just wondering, with an advertised range of 50 meters (according to the article), how likely would these things be to cause real problems for the French military? I would presume the military devices have ranges measured in kilometers. What kind of interference would you get, a mixing of sources, or would it be more like crossing a boundary from one source to the next when you entered the range where an airport's transmission was stronger? How likely would it be that a digital system could pick out only the signal it was interested in from two sources?

    Is it possible they are also worried about people using airports to intercept their communications? Sounds silly given that they'd use encryption for anything important, but who says the military doesn't worry about silly things?

    If I tried to bring an iBook into France, would they arrest me, or does this only affect actual sales in France?
  • Bluetooth is also operating in the 2.4 GHz band, so the french will not be able to use that either. Or maybe they will because the "use-range" of bluetooth is so short. There are two version of bluetooth (I think), one with a range of about 7 metres and one with a range of aprox. 100 metres. Most consumer devices probably will be using the short-range version.

    Also the 100 Mbit/s wireless standard (don't know if this is also 802.11) will be operating at 5 Ghz, so maybe the french will be able to use that.

  • ... (Score:2)

    by pen ( 7191 )
    Here's a direct link to the translated version:

    Click [altavista.com].

    Perhaps Slashdot could start posting URLs like these with another link to Babelfish to give them credit?

    --

  • But seriously folks, this is why the FCC was insane to sell (rather than lease) various frequencies

    Why? If it turns out that the government needs a specific frequency (and large blocks are reserved anyway, so it's not likely that any one private frequency would be needed), they can seize it like any other private property in the U.S., subject only to paying due compensation.

    And, under current interpretations of the law, that due compensation would not include transmision/reciever equipment replacement costs (unless the equipment was also seized), but only the market value of the frequency itself before the government expressed its interest.

    And, of course, that price could be artificially depressed by the government selling off a block of "reserved" spectrum just before exercising eminent domain, and the money from that auction used to pay that price . . . if the government is being smart and Machivellian about it. At worst, it'd be a minor blip in spending to reacquire.

  • While I understand why we might to turn off some of these devices for fear of radio-interference (which is what the french are worried about here), I don't believe that a cd-player puts out any amount of strong EM-waves...

    The problem is that any device that uses digital logic, such as your CD player, may radiate at frequencies that interfere with communication and navigation systems. Your device may be a weak RF emitter but it is much closer to the aircraft's antenna than the transmitters the flight crew are monitoring.

  • The type of modulation is irrelevant. An RF signal has a center frequency, amplitude and bandwidth. The bandwidth usually determines how many "frequencies" are available in a frequency band. For example, an AM broadcast station's signal uses about 10 kHz of bandwidth and an NTSC (USA) TV signal uses about 6 MHz of bandwidth. The number of usable frequencies may be smaller because receivers do not have perfect rejection of signals on adjacent frequencies. That is why there are gaps in the channel assignments of TV stations.
  • Just a note... Anything like Apple's Airport being able to damage military hardware because it runs on a certain frequency would show a severe problem with the french military altogether. If they could experience problems from these devices, then obviously its not fit for combat. Of course they're just complaining because its already reserved though...
  • Meaning that IBM, Intel, HP, Dell, and whatnot, with the more expensive and more powerful and more capable IEEE 802.11 implementations will have big headaches selling to the French, and perhaps other governments/countries.

    Curious:Did no one consider this when IEEE 802.11 was drafted and implemented?


    -AS
  • May be able to escape fairly easily, as it is *only* 50m range, where the other implementations are both more powerful and expensive, with up to 200ft or 300ft(I guess 100m then) ranges.

    Any guesses if French Mac lovers will be able to do something about this as the iBook ships en masse?


    -AS
  • Check out this link: http://www.robertgraham. com/pubs/sniffing-faq.html#airport [robertgraham.com].

    The upshot is that it looks like most people won't/can't encrypt their data so that we can walk around with notebooks sniffing everyone else's connections. There are several companies building Internet-connected base-stations in airports charging connect-time to surf the web (I just got back from Atlanta which had one). Instead of paying them, you can have fund sniffing what everyone else is doing.

  • It _isn't_ just a software issue.

    I've been working for a while on some wireless projects, and making a box handle more than one frequency properly can be very difficult and expensive. Chip sets are sold optimized for a specific frequency, and each band range can have such totally different characteristics that it becomes and apples-and-oranges situation. Reflections, what types of material the signal can pass through, possible bandwidth, etc... many things change, and can cause a total rethinking of how it works. The only way for Apple to handle France is a fairly thorough redesign, and a unit capable of many bandwidths would be more expensive than I want to think about.
  • French police is composed of the Police Nationale (ordinary police, civilian, mainly in cities and urban areas) and the Gendarmerie (military police, mainly in the country or in little towns).

    You can bet that the real army wouldn't care about little flashy notebooks if they had to set up a strong communication system in a hostile country; but here we're not talking about soldiers and fighters, we're talking about policemen. Therefore the constraints are less drastic, and the systems may be less noise-tolerant. Furthermore, when the communication devices in use were created, nobody thought that UHF communication might ever be integrated into a mass-market product.

    They (the gendarmerie) have thousands of offices all over the country, most of time in isolated areas (countryside, very small towns, mountains - they are the guys who will save your life if you ever get lost in a hole in the Alps). They want to have a working communication system and they don't want to dump all their communication devices jus because of a few notebooks.

    I don't think there will be a real problem, though : 50-meters range is not significant in regard to the distances covered by their networks. But if there is a clash, and the choice is between iBooks and the Gendarmes, by money is on the latter.

    Thomas

  • As a co-designer of 802.11... (Score:3)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 24, 1999 @08:19PM (#1660543)
    I can tell you this: we chose that frequency specifically to piss off the French.

  • New World Order! Head for the hills! (Score:3)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 24, 1999 @07:06PM (#1660544)

    I wonder if it's time for the FCC to relinquish control of the broadcast spectrum to the UN or some other similar international agency?

    American sovereignty was decreed by GOD and by NO OTHER. It is not within your authority, nor that of the traitorous United States "Government" infesting Washington, to abrogate American sovereignty by subordinating it to illegal international treaties which are designed to put the United States military DIRECTLY under the control of GENERAL BOUTROS BOUTROS GALI.

    The FCC is an AMERICAN agency, and AMERICANS own the American airwaves! FOREVER. Amen.


    May God grant Victory to our Cause.

  • The ITU, International Telecommunications Union, coordinates communications issues between nations, including frequency allocation. To date, they have not coordinated systems with range that is local to a nation, although the advent of mobile wireless data systems will make this necessary to some extent. So, wireless devices currently use different frequencies in different nations.

    I can't believe that Apple didn't know this, that can't be true. I used to be in touch with their spectrum-management person, though he might have left there by now. Certainly they are cognizant of the basics of radio regulation.

    Besides AirPort, you can't operate CB, Family Radio service (the little 1/2 watt walkie-talkies that have recently become popular) and Transient Radio Service (the color dot system walkie-talkies) in other countries, in general. Some countries don't want you to operate your Inmarsat or other satellite telephone, though this is more rare. In some countries you might be able to license them, but you don't just cross a border and get on the radio without checking first, lest you get a rude visit from the military including equipment confiscation or even inprisonment as a spy in some places - no kidding. Hams have worked out an international license, but they must comply with each country's frequency and power limitations while they are there.

    Bruce

  • Frequency collisions and LA's citizen monitoring T (Score:3)

    by MaggieL ( 10193 ) on Saturday September 25, 1999 @04:22AM (#1660546)
    More frequency allocation conflicts? Sure. Smile, you're on CopTV:

    from ARRL, the amateur radio organizaion:

    ARLB079 League Opposes LA County Experimental Video Proposal

    The ARRL has asked the FCC to deny an experimental license application by Los Angeles County, California, to develop a public safety video system on the 2.4 GHz band. The LA County proposal, filed August 9, seeks FCC authorization to develop an experimental system using four 10-MHz channels to transmit video images from helicopter-borne cameras to five remote receiving sites with active tracking antennas. The signals then would be retransmitted via terrestrial links to the public safety agencies involved.

    In its objection, filed September 23 with the FCC, the League called the LA County proposal a ''foot in the door'' toward gaining a permanent berth in the 2.4 GHz band. ''It is obvious from the experimental proposal that the County wishes to construct the entire system and then simply stay there,'' the League said. The ARRL said the FCC should authorize nothing more than a single 10-MHz video channel for a single transmitter aboard a single helicopter, to allow interference studies to be conducted.

    LA County already is licensed for video operations on a single 2.4 GHz channel but says it encounters operational conflicts with broadcasters. The proposal targets the 2402-2448 MHz band, characterizing it as ''underutilized'' and asserting that current occupants--including Amateur Radio and industrial, scientific and medical instrumentation--would not suffer harmful interference. Amateurs have a primary domestic allocation at 2402-2417 MHz.

    The League's objection said LA County's 2.4 GHz monitoring study was ''significantly flawed'' and ''woefully insufficient,'' and that LA County would be unable to avoid causing ''constant, harmful interference'' to incumbent users. Citing ATV repeaters and video links as well as proposed amateur satellite operation, the League said, the 2.4 GHz band enjoys significant use by the LA area Amateur Radio community. The League said these systems, and those of other amateur users, would be ''seriously degraded or displaced'' by deployment of the proposed experimental system.

    The decision to grant the proposed experimental license is up to the FCC Office of Engineering and Technology's Experimental Licensing Division. In making its decision, however, the OET is expected to consult with the Wireless Telecommunications Bureau, which oversees Amateur Radio and the other affected services on 2.4 GHz.

    In a separate, but related, filing on September 1, Los Angeles County and the cities of Los Angeles, Long Beach and Burbank requested a declaratory ruling from the FCC to ''clarify its rules to facilitate public safety operations on the 2450-2483 MHz band'' and to explore other spectrum allocations ''to accommodate the growing demand for public safety airborne operation.''

    NNNN

  • Re:Modulation questions (Score:3)

    by RobertGraham ( 28990 ) on Friday September 24, 1999 @11:12PM (#1660547) Homepage
    Um. No. Two reasons. The first is that it uses spread-spectrum. AM or FM modulation is only meaningful if you start with a single narrow-spectrum frequency. In other words, think of hearing part of a radio station up and down the dial, but not the complete signal at any one dial position.

    Second, AM or FM is really a dramatic simplification of the way you modulate signals. You are right in thinking that restricting yourself to a single modulation method of either AM or FM dramatically reduces your bandwidth, but you don't think of modulating both amplitude and frequency together; you instead drop the entire concept and modulate the entire wave form. For example, phase-shift-keying (PSK) is a popular modulation technique: think of the sin wave, then abruptly shift it forward 1/4 of a wave (i.e. 90 degrees). You can make some mathematical equation showing the equivalence with simultaneously modulating both amplitude an frequency, but the other mathematics are easier.

  • Found some more info on IEEE 802.11 and, specifically, Apple's Airport.


  • The interesting bit is that this doesn't affect just Apple or even just the iBook--the new desktop G4s can also take the AirPort card. (Makes for an easy home LAN.) AirPort is based on IEE 802.11, no Apple-NIH syndrome here. I think Lucent had a hand in developing the product, and I know that several PC implementations are on the way, including at least one product which is contained on a PC Card

    Here's the skinny from one of Apple's AirPort FAQs: [apple.com]

    IEEE 802.11 is a standard developed by the same organization that set standards for Ethernet networking, which is commonly used in offices. 802.11 is a worldwide standard, so companies that build products conforming to this standard can have their products work together. Schools often find it beneficial to use standardized equipment so that they can combine hardware from different vendors. Home users who buy a standardized product are assured that it will work with products from other companies.

    This paper on IEEE 802.11 [computer.org] I turned up might also be of interest. It contains the "Idiot's Guide to IEEE 802.11 Networking"

    So... now everyone using IEEE 802.11 is screwed in France...But what about Quebec? (j/k)


  • "You will find an inflatable life jacket..." (Score:3)

    by Hobbex ( 41473 ) on Saturday September 25, 1999 @02:15AM (#1660550)

    If you are annoyed by this, have you ever wondered why they have to have a
    light attendant showing you how to use the life-jacket and put on the oxygen
    mask on EVERY flight? Even though there are probably only one or two people who
    have never flown before and they could take them aside before boarding?

    Ever hear of a modern incident where the passengers actually got any use of the
    life jackets? Ever wonder why they do that drill even on flights that don't go
    over any water?

    Ever wonder why airplane seat-belts look like they are from the
    40s, when ones that rolled up like in a car would be less annoying and safer
    (three point protection)?

    Ever wondered why the windows on every make of airplane are exactly the same
    size? What good getting in "crash position" will do you?

    I could on...

    That electronics should actually be a threat to aircraft is a myth. Any
    such problems could easily be fixed anyways. Welcome to the world of
    regulation, my friend! These rules go back to the dawn of commercial flight in
    40s and 50s, when seat-belts looked like that, when planes actually crash
    landed on the water, and when anything that created radio transference was
    strange and scary.

    Apparently, nobody wants to renegotiate these rules because it is such hell
    trying to agree, and well, the passengers aren't complaining.

    -
    /. is like a steer's horns, a point here, a point there and a lot of bull in between.

  • Re:"You will find an inflatable life jacket..." (Score:3)

    by Hobbex ( 41473 ) on Saturday September 25, 1999 @01:19PM (#1660551)
    I'd rather suffer a small annoyance and get home safe to see my family.

    This is just a matter of what one considers a "minor" annoyance. If getting home alive was more important to you than any annoyance you shouldn't be flying. Hell, you shouldn't have left home at all (yes, that is annoying).

    And IF electronics, contrary to what I have heard, DO cause a risk, I would be much happier if the airlines solved the problem technically, rather then trying to ban there way out of it. I don't like to imagine my life at jeopardy because people are sneeking onboard there pdas and walkmen.

    A technical solution is always superior to legal one.

    -
    /. is like a steer's horns, a point here, a point there and a lot of bull in between.

  • Re:first one, at last (Score:3)

    by _Sprocket_ ( 42527 ) on Friday September 24, 1999 @08:12PM (#1660552)
    Humm so now everyone knows the freqs used by the French military....interesting

    The issue really isn't what frequency range is being used. That should be pretty easy to deturmine even as a civilian.

    What's of concern when it comes to that kind of thing is the EXACT frequency being used for EXACTLY what application (and what kind of intelligence signal is being used for said application). That's the information that'll get stamped with the big security classification stamp.

  • Re:Damage? (Score:3)

    by anticypher ( 48312 ) <anticypher.gmail@com> on Saturday September 25, 1999 @01:52AM (#1660553) Homepage
    I noticed that too. Maybe its time to start moderating RobLimo :-) If he posts too many poorly translated or inflamatory stories, his karma drops and he can no longer post new stories. :-)

    There is nothing in this article about damaging equipment, just in the poorly translated header from First Person. (can someone say FlameBait?)

    Inside the article there is the word "brouiller", which means to interfere or scramble. There is nothing about damage, either to the airPorts or military.

    What the article does talk about is the new concept of licensing mobile radio systems. The french have a hard enough time with basic CB radio licensing (the CBers have been fighting to keep their rights for years), and the frequencies used by analog and digital mobile phones took years to wrest away from the goverment by France Telecom, even though they were the state run phone company. Apple doesn't have a lot of clout to force a major change.

    Every radio transmitter in France has to have a license, and the administration only allows fixed site installations. With the airPort, every owner of an iMac has to get permission for every place they take their airPort. The basic concept of frequency allocation in France gives the governement (read, the military) the rights to any band not specifically licensed to other uses.

    As the article says, if the iMac is going to be very popular, and if every citizen asks to licence their 2.4 GHz airPorts, the ART will get overwhelmed by the requests. The French government hasn't the brains to realize it would be simpler to grant a license to the airPorts and make it legal, since that would lose them some control.

    And the French Gendarmerie has a section of the 2.4 GHz 802.11 band they use for their own data comms. Although France (through their rep to the ETSI) signed an international treaty at the WARC convention in Geneva a few years ago, they gave the Gendarmerie 10 years to move completely out of the band. But inside of any city with more than 50,000 population the 802.11 frequencies can be used without a license, but only by fixed stations. So the AirPort is TSOL.

    The most likely solution is for apple to offer an ETSI approved model for sale in France (or all of Europe). Then the drivers can limit the card to only a few channels, and disable the channels used by the French governement.

    the AC

  • New weapon? (Score:3)

    by Zagato-sama ( 79044 ) on Friday September 24, 1999 @06:54PM (#1660554) Homepage
    Wow nice, now if someone wants to invade France all they need to do is bring in a dozen or so G4s to knock out their airforce. Of course now Steve Jobs can show that not only is the G4 more powerful then the Pentium 3, but it's also a great weapon for world domination ;)

  • International Frequency Allocation (Score:4)

    by ryder ( 111 ) on Friday September 24, 1999 @06:26PM (#1660555)
    Wireless networking is great, but as Apple has found different countries allocate the frequencies differently. What may be a useable frequency in one country is likely not to be in another.

    I wonder if it's time for the FCC to relinquish control of the broadcast spectrum to the UN or some other similar international agency? Or maybe, an ISO standard for frequency allocations.

    But perhaps the simplest answer is to have the machines be programmable to use different frequencies which can be assigned and changed via software. The hardware for this would be more expensive however, because it would need to accomdate a much greater range of possible frequencies, and it would bring about a whole host of other issues. The least of which being users changing their frequencies to illegal ones in their country, and causing interference with the communications assigned to that frequency.

  • Translated (Score:4)

    by Silverhammer ( 13644 ) on Friday September 24, 1999 @06:33PM (#1660556)
    The iBook of APPLE encroaches on frequencies of the French Army

    PARIS (AFP) - Ven 24 Sep 99 - Paris 16h07 time - the new portable computer of APPLE, the iBook, risk to pose delicate problems with the French Army: it will indeed use for the reception of the Internet without wire a frequency of 2,4 Ghz, reserved in France with the army except authorization, reveals the bulletin of CNRS " Internet Actu " of Friday.

    Apart from 300 large French cities, where the authorization is tacit within one month, any user of apparatus in the tape of the 2,4 Ghz must individually request an authorization from ART (Authority of Regulation of Telecommunications). ART transmits it to the military national Office frequencies, confirmed ART and the rear-admiral Jacques Bizard, head of the military Office.

    Up to now, ART and the army delivered a few hundreds of authorizations to users of these frequencies. " the last year, we received 500 requests for authorization, including 195 transmitted to the army ", explained ART.
    Generally, they are companies which obtain a radioelectric network making it possible computers to communicate without wire.

    " In general, there is no reason to say not ", added the rear-admiral Bizard. " But they are localised networks. On the other hand the iBook is an apparatus light and removable ", explained the soldier.

    The case of a portable apparatus is obviously not envisaged by the texts, since the requests for authorization must " be accompanied by a plan of the establishment considered, making it possible to precisely locate the site of establishment within the commune concerned ", explains the form of authorization of ART.

    An apparatus using the frequency of 2,4 Ghz can scramble an apparatus of the army or vice versa. " Contrary to other countries of Europe which do not have this constraint, in France this frequency band is a soldier. APPLE probably did not think there. But we will not put all our apparatuses at breakage because the iBook arrives ", launched the admiral Bizard.

    " the problem was not taken enough in time ", it added. For the moment, the admiral should treat only 10 requests per week but it is likely to be found submerged if the iBook is a success.
    On his side, the person in charge marketing produced of APPLE France, Hughes Asseman, remains serene, by recalling that the range of the iBook does not exceed 50 meters and should not pose problem of authorization.

    " to receive the Internet without wire, the iBook communicates by radio waves with a terminal, Airport, connected on the telephone wire or a cable, in a radius of 50 meters. Unless being in a joint part with a military HQ, that cannot pose problem ", commented on Hughes Asseman. " We have zero concern on marketing ".

    " We will have to examine the design features of the apparatus, for example to check that the range does not exceed 50 meters ", concluded from his side the head of the military national office of the frequencies.

    The requests for authorization will have in any case to be sent individually by each holder of iBook using the Airport terminal, delivered in option and which must be launched about mid-October.

    To derogate from this legal obligation involves the risk of imprisonment a 6 months and of 200.000 francs fine, noted ART.

  • Not just Apple, but everyone... (Score:4)

    by Anonymous Shepherd ( 17338 ) on Friday September 24, 1999 @07:14PM (#1660557) Homepage
    Has a serious problem then.

    Apple is just utilizing the IEEE 802.11 wireless lan technology that Lucent, 3com, and others are designing and selling.

    A new.com article tells of Dell also planning on utilizing similar technology.

    If France(and other countries) allocate their frequencies in this range for military or non public use, than *no* IEEE 802.11 specified devices can be used/sold/imported. I wonder how this will be resolved, else France will either need to develop their own technolog and solutions or they will miss out entirely!


    -AS

  • On a related note... (Score:4)

    by grmoc ( 57943 ) on Friday September 24, 1999 @06:55PM (#1660558)

    Many fellow geeks are probably as annoyed as I am when the airlines tell you to turn your laptop, cdplay, etc off during takeoff and landing.

    While I understand why we might to turn off some of these devices for fear of radio-interference (which is what the french are worried about here), I don't believe that a cd-player puts out any amount of strong EM-waves...

    And also related.. Certain Brazillian airlines don't let you use any electronics -at all- .. unless you're a first class passenger..

    I really want to know what the difference between their devices and my devices is! (And don't tell me that the first-class cabin is "more" EM shielded than coach... unless that fabric curtain is steel-thread, the waves go both ways..)


    Last thing: Many posts so far are along the lines of: Don't understand how the iBook could harm the french military's whatsoever, or block their whatsowhoosits.. Well, if the french are broadcasting in the 2.4 Ghz range with military amplitude (normally with lots of power!!), then the iBook's airport circuitry might get fried... Fun fun!! (WEll, those would have to be some STRONG waves, but its possible)


    Maybe next time I'll get a first-class upgrade on that brazillian airline... I wonder if the magic that happens from flying first class wears off after you step off of the plane?

  • Frequency of French. (Score:4)

    by gwyndaf ( 85111 ) on Friday September 24, 1999 @07:50PM (#1660559)
    Europe has a unified standard "ETS 300 328" making 2.4 to 2.4835 GHz available. Unfortunately in France the Gendarmerie use the bottom of the band, leaving only 2.4465 Ghz upwards available. I think it's explained here [ilink.fr].

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