> They’re using LoRA, a low bandwidth (kilobits/second at the most) long range radio protocol. Even if I wanted to I couldn’t connect to the network with standard consumer hardware to compromise your network.
Can we as a society for once stop making the airwaves proprietary?
LoRA isn’t a “proprietary” standard. It’s open to everyone to use. It operates at 900 mMHz, though, so the point is that your average WiFi or Bluetooth device can’t transmit or receive it. That 900 MHz spectrum is unlicensed, so buy a dev kit from Adafruit and go make some RF noise!
The first sentence on the LoRA article on Wikipedia is:
> LoRa (Long Range) is a proprietary low-power wide-area network modulation technique. It is based on spread spectrum modulation techniques derived from chirp spread spectrum (CSS) technology. It was developed by Cycleo of Grenoble, France and acquired by Semtech, the founding member of the LoRa Alliance and it is patented.
It's proprietary, patented, and not open. It shouldn't be on the airwaves.
So are 3G, 4G, and 5G. So is WiFi. "Proprietary" just means you need a to buy a licensed LoRa radio chip to use the protocol in a commercial product - something you can do on digikey for $5. The implementation of the protocol itself is well known and you can easily interact with LoRa devices using an SDR [1].
Can we as a society for once stop making the airwaves proprietary?