An American intelligence assessment found that the balloon used a commercially available U.S. network to communicate, primarily for navigation, U.S. officials say.
  • paultimate14@lemmy.worldEnglish
    969·
    11 months ago

    I was having a hard time imagining which company this could be. Not that I’m a fan of Verizon or Comcast, but I think they know what side their bread is buttered on. Which one wouldn’t?

    Then I remembered Starlink exists.

    • Linkerbaan@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1663·
      11 months ago

      Don’t think they were colluding with the provider. They probably just put a burner sim card into a 4g module and sent data over a VPN to China whenever it had signal.

      • postmateDumbass@lemmy.worldEnglish
        4·
        11 months ago

        The blurb says primarily for navigation.

        So it was using the starlink signals like gps signal and therefore they needed to correlate with the carrier to get a rough time sync.

        I wonder what timing data is freely available on the starlink acquisition signal.

        • Linkerbaan@lemmy.worldEnglish
          32·
          11 months ago

          Why would they need data then? With GPS can get a 1metre accurate chip for like 20 bucks and it’s way smaller. And no need for any carrier or subscription.

          • postmateDumbass@lemmy.worldEnglish
            1·
            11 months ago

            Mapping out network topology? Who knows.

            Whatever the collected data was, it could have been sent to their satellites for long haul back home.

    • Joker@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
      51·
      11 months ago

      It’s a satellite provider. Cell networks don’t work at that altitude. Starlink was my first guess too but, after some more thought, it could be Hughesnet. They probably have wider coverage.