FCC (or Motorola...): Hytera is a National Security Threat?

[intermod]

FCC List of Equipment and Services That Pose National Security Threat

Released On: Mar 12, 2021

http://www.fcc.gov/document/fcc-list-equipment-and-services-pose-national-security-threat

"FCC's Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau publishes a list of communications equipment and services that are deemed a threat to national security, consistent with requirements in the Secure and Trusted Communications Networks Act of 2019"

A later link takes you to a document with more detail on Hytera's issues:

"Covered Equipment or Services

Video surveillance and telecommunications equipment produced or provided by Hytera Communications Corporation, to the extent it is used for the purpose of public safety, security of government facilities, physical security surveillance of critical infrastructure, and other national security purposes, including telecommunications or video surveillance services produced or provided by such entity or using such equipment."

 

Commentary:  It looks like Motorola is getting great value for their DC lobbying investments.  Some GMRS licensees that use Hytera products (including me) will find it amusing that they have again gone to the courts to kill their most viable competitor.  So, instead of providing products that meet their customer's needs, Motorola has found it more cost-effective to pursue the low road.  They are getting really lazy - not the same company when it was under the Galvins.   

For those not having used Hytera's higher-end mobile, portable and repeater products (similar build quality to Motorola in their DMR lines, designed originally for the Chinese police forces, etc.), you will find them to be superior from a feature, capability and ETSI compliance standpoint.  Not even close.                

While I support death to the CCP (our greatest enemy) and the concern over camera equipment, I will give credit to Hytera for their product design efforts, even though they likely lifted some marginally important IP from Motorola (another ongoing litigation issue).   As the repeaters have Ethernet connectivity, I can see a concern there that might be mitigated through a simple "air gap". 

This policy will really kick Hytera's a** in the utility market and elsewhere.  They do not manufacturer any P25 products. 

FCC List of Equipment and Services That Pose National Security Threat:

[SUPERG900]

The sorry fact is, this kind of market protectionism comes back to BITE, and hard! All this *bogus* "national security" posturing just means that other nations will pull the same stunt on us. You and I, consumers, will end up the ones paying for it. 

[WRKC935]

It really depends on how you look at it as to if it's truly a threat or not.  Motorola figured out that DMR is a REALLY bad idea for public safety  in the VHF and UHF bands.  Issue being the way that the FCC granted frequencies in those bands during the days of wide band FM don't work with DMR.  CO-channel users interfere with each other a lot when one is on DMR and the other is on analog. 

 

Second is the unwritten requirement of interoperability and THAT specifically being a matter of national security.  Motorola does not, and will not make a radio that is DMR and P25.  P25 is the standard for public safety. DMR is really in the US for public safety.  So if it ends up there, and everyone else is using P25 then there is an incompatibility that can't easily be overcome.  Sure there is patching and other means.  But you are not going to take a DMR radio and turn the knob and talk to the P25 system or vice versa.  This in some twisted interpretation of things be considered a threat to the national security, depending on the situation and circumstance.  If the commies are invading down through some border town North Dakota, and the local PD is on DMR, they can't warn of the pending invasion,,,, I guess because the rest of everyone else is on P25,,, maybe... i guess.

 

But Hytera is a Chinese company.  Meaning they are run by that government.  Are they friendly to us???????? Depends on who you ask and when you ask.  But with any communications gear, are there internal things going on there or could there be that may breach data security?  If you put into a IP networked device to "call home" and bury that in the code that no one will see.  How closely is the IP network traffic being watched as it's exiting a repeater?  

If they get the conversations from some hammie or warehouse worker about a toilet being clogged, who cares.  If they are getting personal information about people having their tags run by law enforcement, getting SSN's addresses and such, that could be a problem.  IS it an issue?  Probably not.... but one firmware update could change that.

[JohnE]

I'm just going to leave this here

http://comms.kenwood.com/special/nx_5000/mobile.html

[SUPERG900]

I'm just going to leave this here

http://comms.kenwood.com/special/nx_5000/mobile.html

 

Nice radio - probably not made in Japan though.... looks like you gotta pay through the nose to enable the different features.

 

MPL_LMR.pdf (secomwireless.com)

[intermod]

On 3/15/2021 at 9:00 PM, WRKC935 said:

Motorola figured out that DMR is a REALLY bad idea for public safety  in the VHF and UHF bands.  Issue being the way that the FCC granted frequencies in those bands during the days of wide band FM don't work with DMR.  CO-channel users interfere with each other a lot when one is on DMR and the other is on analog. 

....Motorola does not, and will not make a radio that is DMR and P25. 

...If the commies are invading down through some border town North Dakota, and the local PD is on DMR, they can't warn of the pending invasion,,,, I guess because the rest of everyone else is on P25,,, maybe... i guess....

I think what "Motorola figured out" is that once the users perceive that DMR operates the same as P25, and the system administrators discover that DMR is about 30% the cost and they get twice the channel capacity and more features than P25, they will no longer purchase expensive P25 hardware.   Its a marketing decision by Motorola, that just happens to also be good for maintaining interoperability.   Its the same game played by politicians. 

I agree with your comment on interop, except that 95% of the time, the locals can't talk to other locals or the feds anyway, either because they are on different bands (locals cannot afford multiband radios), or the Fed did not, or refuse to share their encryption keys.  Of they fail to program in each others frequencies.  An normally is bad practice to change channel to another system because your commanders need you on your normal channels.  

If DMR had a profit margins that P25 does, Moto would just come up with an excuse to promote that technology instead - and so would the politicians. 

It has noting to do with co-channel interference related to DMR - this is fake news (likely by Moto or Kenwood).  DMR, P25, NXDN will all be similar at the co-channel distances we are talking about (DMR is noisier than most when strong, but they would not license someone that close).  Frequency Coordinators assign co-channel stations based on carrier-to-interference ratios, and the modulation is not even a consideration, except when they look at adjacent-channel separation.  Then they still don't care if its P25, NXDN, DMR, etc. - they only look at the bandwidth of the signal which is the first three of four digital in the emission designator.   

But I may be wrong. 

[WRKC935]

On 5/21/2021 at 3:22 PM, intermod said:

But I may be wrong. 

Well, in this case you are.  I WORK for the company that put in the last of the public safety DMR systems in Ohio.  And then bought it back.  And oddly enough, we installed the system that was 3 counties away, that was interfering with at least one of the channels and had that customer complaining that they were hearing the DMR noise from a repeater that was 3 counties away.  Installed on a 4 story building, running a 40 watt XPR8300 repeater on VHF.  The Frequency in question was 155.415.  Motorola was NOT pleased at all about any of it.  They had never interferred with each other when they were bout analog.  Never even heard each other.  But the DMR being heard by teh analog was an issue, and the bigger issue was the DMR subscribers were hearing the analog signal strongly enough (was a 5 site simulcast system) that they were not fully capturing the DMR signal and the BER was climbing to the point they were unable to decode the signal.  It happened on 3 of the 4 public safety VHF frequencies.  If it were UHF, it would most likely been different.  We did some testing to see if it could be fixed.  Tried setting the radios to color code free instead of channel free.  No dice.  We also tried to see how well DMR would talk out.  Took a subscriber out to a distance that it was hearing mostly noise on NB FM.  Switched it to DMR and had a BER that floated between 2 and 3%. 

 

 

[JLeikhim]

Well, in this case you are.  I WORK for the company that put in the last of the public safety DMR systems in Ohio.  And then bought it back.  And oddly enough, we installed the system that was 3 counties away, that was interfering with at least one of the channels and had that customer complaining that they were hearing the DMR noise from a repeater that was 3 counties away.  Installed on a 4 story building, running a 40 watt XPR8300 repeater on VHF.  The Frequency in question was 155.415.  Motorola was NOT pleased at all about any of it.  They had never interferred with each other when they were bout analog.  Never even heard each other.  But the DMR being heard by teh analog was an issue, and the bigger issue was the DMR subscribers were hearing the analog signal strongly enough (was a 5 site simulcast system) that they were not fully capturing the DMR signal and the BER was climbing to the point they were unable to decode the signal.  It happened on 3 of the 4 public safety VHF frequencies.  If it were UHF, it would most likely been different.  We did some testing to see if it could be fixed.  Tried setting the radios to color code free instead of channel free.  No dice.  We also tried to see how well DMR would talk out.  Took a subscriber out to a distance that it was hearing mostly noise on NB FM.  Switched it to DMR and had a BER that floated between 2 and 3%. 
 
 

Had you installed a P25 system on that frequency and site, the complaints would have been exactly the same.

Sent from my SM-T350 using Tapatalk