[time-nuts] WWVB Now a Monopoly

[Majdi S. Abbas]

On Wed, Sep 26, 2012 at 06:05:14PM +0000, Poul-Henning Kamp wrote:
> Class action suit because they *improve* your VLF time/freq reference
> signal and document the new format ?

	Speaking for myself, I'm mostly annoyed that our government was
lobbied with its own money for this*.  

	If these details were released earlier, and we were given a 
migration timeframe up front, it'd be possible to be better prepared.
Instead, we're getting the details a couple of weeks before they change
formats.  (At least, I think it's a couple of weeks.  It's now 'sometime
in the fall.')

	I also don't understand the point of changing the modulation
format with no receivers in the wild.  Seems they could give us another
six months easily, at no real loss to anyone since there are no shipping
chipsets or receivers that understand the BPSK format.  

	I don't object to changing formats per se, but this has not been
handled very gracefully.  With more testing, a full suite of
documentation, and a firm migration timeline announced well in advance,
I'd be much happier.

	Without the docs, nobody's going to develop a receiver yet,
either, which is essentially going to kill off any commercial use of
WWVB for a while outside of wall clocks.  This may actually be a
permanent shift.

	Existing users have had to replace their references with GPS.  
Having just made that capital investment, how likely do you think they 
will be to buy a WWVB reference within the next few years.  Or ever?

	After all, why invest into a receiver for any US government
T&F services besides the GPS?  In the last ~15 years, we've lost
Omega, the GOES TOD code, LORAN, and now WWVB (effectively.)  

	Each time, we have been told 'you should be using GPS anyway.'
Since it's obvious that anything but the GPS can go away at any time,
why make an investment into a new WWVB receiver at all?

	If you're a commercial user, it does not make sense to bother.

	The target market for the new modulation is consumer devices --
only.  The time-nuts may be the only people that bother using it for
anything else.

	--msa

[*] I'll explain this in another post.