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
    10111·
    6 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
      1723·
      6 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·
        6 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·
          6 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·
            6 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
      54·
      6 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.