Technology Advancements - Improvements and issues

Stryder50

Platinum Member
Feb 8, 2021
8,349
5,063
938
Lynden, WA, USA
I came across this a couple weeks ago, and as can be seen, the change has happened. How many have had adverse issues/complications ?

The looming 3G shutdown comes with life-threatening risks​

...
On the morning of Feb. 23, millions who depend on a 3G wireless connected device for medical emergencies, fires, burglaries or carbon monoxide detection will find their lives needlessly at risk. These devices will not work when AT&T shuts down its 3G network on Feb. 22, threatening tens of millions of people relying on them in their homes and businesses.

Known as the 3G sunset, those affected include hundreds of thousands of people who have personal emergency response systems (PERS). Over 85 percent are seniors, live alone and are 100 percent dependent on these to summon health emergency services, critically important if they fall. In addition, well over a million burglar and fire alarm systems will fail, causing needless havoc for residential and commercial consumers. Millions of older cars will lose connectivity for collision avoidance, summoning 911 and other emergency services, ankle bracelet monitoring systems for violent criminals used by the judicial system won't work and school bus monitoring systems protecting students won't work either.

If it sounds like a bad movie plot, it isn't, it's real and the Alarm Industry Communications Committee (AICC) takes this very seriously. We have and will continue to do everything in our power to protect the American public from this looming disaster scenario.

Starting with AT&T, cell phone companies are shutting down their existing 3G networks so they can repurpose that spectrum to support their more advanced networks. To be very clear, we support moving to 5G that will provide faster downloading of information as America needs to remain globally competitive. However, repurposing the spectrum from AT&T's 3G network for their 5G network will not provide consumers with the much-hyped promise of faster downloading of data, games and movies.

Since the wireless providers published notification shutting down their 3G networks three years ago, the AICC and its members have been working tirelessly to upgrade existing alarm systems that communicate over the 3G networks, most of which require technicians to make in-person home or business appointments to replace wireless radios with newer models and training customers to use them. AT&T's 3G shutdown is the earliest and therefore creates a timing issue.
...
 
Here's an interesting and positive development;

Whoops, Humans Made a Space Barrier Around Earth​

The kicker? It’s actually saving us.​

...​

Forget the Kármán line—there’s a human-made space barrier to wonder about, first observed by NASA in 2017. The mysterious zone of anthropogenic space weather is caused by specific kinds of radio waves that we’ve been blasting into the atmosphere for decades, but experts say the expanding band actually helps protect humankind from dangerous space radiation.

ScienceAlert reports that NASA first observed this belt in 2012. The agency sends probes to explore different parts of our solar system, including the Van Allen Belts: a huge, torus-shaped area of radiation that surrounds Earth. The donut shape follows the equator, leaving the North and South Poles free.

So, what’s our new protective barrier? The same probes that launched in 2012 to help us understand the Belts better in the first place detected this phenomenon, and in 2017, the probes gave us the first evidence of the radio-wave barrier emanating from Earth. ScienceAlert explains:


“A certain type of transmission, called very low frequency (VLF) radio communications, have become far more common now than in the 60s, and the team at NASA confirmed that they can influence how and where certain particles in space move about.”

Why is this? Well, the very low frequency (VLF) waves are exactly right to cancel out and repel the radiative advances of the Van Allen Belts as a matter of total coincidence. In fact, NASA initially considered this a true coincidence, saying that a radio wave area happened to match exactly with the edge of the Van Allen Belts. But in 2017, the agency published findings revealing that one has caused the other after all.​

...​

 

Forum List

Back
Top