QResear.ch

#19591462 at 2023-09-21 23:03:56 (UTC+1)
Q Research General #24059: Catharsis of Corruption Edition

Vodafone claims first space-based 5G phone call - no modifications needed
Thu 21 Sep 2023 // 12:34 UTC

Vodafone is claiming to have made the world's first space-based 5G call placed using an unmodified handset, thanks to a test satellite operated by AST SpaceMobile.

Interest in delivering services to mobile phones from orbiting satellites has been growing since Apple unveiled its Emergency SOS feature for the iPhone that allows users to text for help even when there is no terrestrial network coverage.

However, the BlueWalker 3 satellite operated by AST SpaceMobile is specifically designed to provide 4G and 5G connectivity, allowing for data services and internet voice calls, which is what happened in this case.

According to Vodafone, the 5G call was made on September 8 from Maui, Hawaii, to a Vodafone engineer in Madrid, Spain, from an unmodified Samsung Galaxy S22 smartphone, using the WhatsApp voice and messaging app.

A cynic might therefore argue that it was AST SpaceMobile that made this first space-based 5G call possible rather than Vodafone. We couldn't possibly comment. Vodafone is, however, an investor in AST SpaceMobile, along with Rakuten Mobile in Japan and AT&T in the US.

But that didn't stop Vodafone Group Chief Executive Margherita Della Valle from hailing it as an important step in delivering connectivity to more users.

"Vodafone is striving to close the mobile usage gap for millions of people across Europe and Africa. By making the world's first space-based 5G call to Europe, we have taken another important step in realizing that ambition," she said in a statement.

The move follows on from AST SpaceMobile claiming the first two-way voice call directly to everyday unmodified smartphones via the BlueWalker 3 in April. The call in that instance was made from Midland in Texas to Rakuten in Japan using 4G.

In a separate test, AST Space Mobile said it achieved a download rate of nearly 14Mbps in a broadband data session using the BlueWalker 3 satellite. This demonstrates the potential of the technology to connect people in remote regions to the internet for the first time using existing mobile phones, the company claimed.

BlueWalker 3 is still just a test vehicle, however, and is paving the way for AST SpaceMobile's plans to launch five commercial BlueBird satellites in the first quarter of 2024.

Vodafone said that AST SpaceMobile's terrestrial infrastructure in Spain will play a key role, including a control center for the management of customer traffic, which will cover remote land-based areas within Europe and the Mediterranean.

A Vodafone spokesperson told us that it intends to offer commercial services using AST SpaceMobile satellites in future, but said it is too early to name any definitive date for when this will be available as the timing is dependent on AST SpaceMobile successfully deploying its satellite constellation - something that is not without risk, as Viasat knows full well.

These services should allow broadband connections using any standard 5G smartphone, Vodafone told us. The telecoms giant also said it has an exclusivity arrangement with AST SpaceMobile for services covering Europe and Africa.

Vodafone is backing more than one horse in the race. It is also involved with Amazon's Project Kuiper to extend 4G and 5G services to more regions in Europe and Africa via satellites, although it has yet to launch any.

In the US, T-Mobile has hooked up with Elon Musk's SpaceX to link its terrestrial wireless network with the Starlink low Earth orbit satellite constellation. The pair aim to initially support text messaging covering the US, with a plan to extend support to voice and data coverage afterwards.

However, AST SpaceMobile may have a technical advantage here, as Gartner VP Analyst Bill Ray previously explained to us.

"SpaceMobile's point of differentiation is its huge antenna, which makes it capable of putting down a small spot beam which limits interference. Starlink's v2 satellites have a tiny antenna, by comparison, which means bigger spot footprints and more potential for interference," Ray said.

Concerns over potential interference with existing terrestrial wireless services led to AT&T filing a petition with the US Federal Communications Commission earlier this year to block T-Mobile US from operating its satellite-based service

https://www.theregister.com/2023/09/21/vodafone_first_space_5g_call/

#17517252 at 2022-09-10 22:37:10 (UTC+1)
Q Research General #21473: Queen's Protection Gone, Weak King Checkmate! Edition

>>17517237
>Murdaugh murder mystery deepens

2/3 (good story, interwebs sleuthing laid out the drug runnning off the coast- "fish camps")

"I'm going to tell you something," another man at the gang member's house told The Post. "Alex Murdaugh is running half the drugs in this county."
The introduction of the Walterboro Cowboys "cousins" is only the latest twist in a drama that kicked off on June 21, 2021, when Murdaugh, the scion of one of the most prominent legal families in the state, called 911 to say his wife, Maggie, 52, and son, Paul, 22, had been murdered at the family's 1,700-acre hunting lodge in Islandton, SC.
Smith - aka "Cousin Eddie," a distant cousin of Murdaugh's - entered the picture on Labor Day last year when he was arrested for supposedly trying to shoot Murdaugh on a rural road in Hampton County in a convoluted insurance fraud/suicide-for-hire scam. Murdaugh's attorney later claimed his client had a 20-year opioid addiction and that Smith was his dealer.
But Murdaugh and Smith were allegedly part of a bigger operation.
In June, Murdaugh and Smith were indicted on conspiracy and drug charges that allege Smith received at least 437 checks totaling $2,413,754.79 from Murdaugh, between 2013 and 2021. It's alleged that Smith convert them into cash in a scheme to benefit Murdaugh as part of "myriad unlawful activities."
The investigation into Murdaugh so far totals 18 indictments containing 90 charges against him that involve schemes to defraud victims of $8,789,447.77.
Among the many locals that Murdaugh allegedly swindled in insurance settlement scams were the sons of Gloria Satterfield, his family's housekeeper who died in a mysterious fall in 2018 at the Murdaugh home, and a deaf black man who ended up a quadriplegic after a car accident.
The murder trial won't start until January at the earliest but courtroom mudslinging has already started, with his lawyers complaining they've been "ambushed" by leaks to the media, including allegations that video from Paul Murdaugh's cell phone shows his father present with him and Maggie not long before the murders.
Murdaugh may be found guilty of the murders, but a number of his friends and business associates could go down with him for financial misdeeds - even if many didn't fully understand what they were getting into.
"A lot of good people are going to go down with Alex Murdaugh," said a Hampton County source familiar with certain aspects of the investigation. "A lot of them had no idea what he was really into and they got involved with him in small ways that could end up really hurting them."
Lisa Smith of Walterboro, who used to be married to Smith's brother, Bill Ray, said "Cousin Eddie" was a hard-working logger and good guy until he was injured on the job and developed a painkiller addiction.
"Then he started changing," Lisa said. "We also thought it was really strange when Eddie showed up at a relative's funeral some years ago with Alex Murdaugh. We were like, what's that about? What are these two doing together? Now we know."
But Lisa said she knew something was going on with Smith when he began coming to the bank where she worked in Walterboro to cash big checks that he never deposited into his account.
"I couldn't cash them because I was kin," she said. "But I asked him, 'What are you doing, where is this money coming from?' and he never answered. I think Murdaugh took advantage of the fact that [Smith] got hurt and couldn't work and got him involved in all this."
She, like a number of other residents of Colleton and Hampton counties interviewed by The Post last week, wonder if Murdaugh's alleged drug-running could involve smuggling by sea as well.
That theory comes from intel that first surfaced on web sleuth forums in the weeks following the murders of Maggie and Paul, indicating that Murdaugh had a decades-long friendship with a Beaufort-based fisherman, Barrett T. Boulware, who was arrested with his father on drug smuggling charges in 1980. In that case, officials seized 15 tons of marijuana on a shrimp boat in the Bahamas.
The charges against the Boulwares were dropped in 1983 "after a key government witness was killed when he stepped in front of a car in Florida," the State newspaper reported at the time.

con't

#9773324 at 2020-06-28 05:21:30 (UTC+1)
Q Research General #12509:Bread Rising to the occasion. Understanding what's at steak. Edition

James Comey miniseries moved to air before 2020 election after director complains

Under pressure from the cast and crew, ViacomCBS moved up the scheduled release of the Showtime miniseries based on former FBI Director James Comey's memoir. The reversal came after Bill Ray, the director of the two-part, four-hour miniseries wrote a letter to cast members last week to express frustration that the series was scheduled to air in November, days after the 2020 election, according to the New York Times. Ray lamented to the cast that he completed the project with the expectation that it would air before the election. "We all were hoping to get this story in front of the American people months before the coming election," reads the letter, as reported by Deadline. "Word started drifting back to me that a decision about our airdate had been made at the very highest levels of Viacom: all talk of our airing before the election was suddenly a 'non-starter.' I and my fellow producers asked for a chance to plead our case on the matter, but we were told that even the discussion itself was a 'non-starter' … Why? I don't know," Ray wrote.

On Wednesday, Showtime said in a statement that the project is now scheduled to air on Sept. 27 and 28. Showtime's The Comey Rule, based on the former FBI director's memoir, A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership, was teased earlier this month by the company after it shared ominous photographs of actors Brendan Gleeson as President Trump and Jeff Daniels, star of Dumb and Dumber, as the former FBI director. Comey was fired by Trump in May 2017. Other characters in the show include former acting Attorney General Sally Yates, former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, and special counsel Robert Mueller, who investigated Russian interference in the 2016 election. The first part of the miniseries will depict the early days of the Russia investigation, the FBI's investigation into failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's emails, and Trump's 2016 election victory. The second will show the interactions between Comey and Trump, a day-by-day account of the first several months of the Trump presidency from Comey's perspective.
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/james-comey-miniseries-moved-to-air-before-2020-election-after-director-complains

In Reversal, Trump-Comey Mini-Series Will Now Air Before Election Day
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/24/business/media/trump-comey-mini-series.html
'The Comey Rule' Director Billy Ray Apologizes To Cast For ViacomCBS Decision To Move Comey-Trump Saga Until After Presidential Elections: Read His Letter
https://deadline.com/2020/06/the-comey-rule-Billy-Ray-cast-apology-note-post-election-airdate-president-trump-james-comey-jeff-daniels-1202967723/

#9772256 at 2020-06-28 02:29:36 (UTC+1)
Q Research General #12507: Slow Saturday Night Edition

James Comey miniseries moved to air before 2020 election after director complains

Under pressure from the cast and crew, ViacomCBS moved up the scheduled release of the Showtime miniseries based on former FBI Director James Comey's memoir.

The reversal came after Bill Ray, the director of the two-part, four-hour miniseries wrote a letter to cast members last week to express frustration that the series was scheduled to air in November, days after the 2020 election, according to the New York Times.

Ray lamented to the cast that he completed the project with the expectation that it would air before the election.

"We all were hoping to get this story in front of the American people months before the coming election," reads the letter, as reported by Deadline.

"Word started drifting back to me that a decision about our airdate had been made at the very highest levels of Viacom: all talk of our airing before the election was suddenly a 'non-starter.' I and my fellow producers asked for a chance to plead our case on the matter, but we were told that even the discussion itself was a 'non-starter' ... Why? I don't know," Ray wrote.

https://dnyuz.com/2020/06/27/james-comey-miniseries-moved-to-air-before-2020-election-after-director-complains/