This gets real interesting, real fast. DJI published an analysis of who was on the 75 member invited "Industry Advisory Committee". Mostly telecom providers in the form of big cellular companies and law enforcement. Users and manufacturers were woefully under-represented.
So the published pipe dream is that some service provider would 1. Charge public users only 5 USD per month, 2. Feed all this flight data down a pipeline (or two) to FAA and probably other agencies for free, 3. Retain the
data for six months, and yet have the level of customer service to make the drone delivery companies happy.
So either some one is planning to spend in the government's black budget for what I'm going to call "Total Drone Awareness" or this was a pipedream of totally privatized art traffic control via the existing cell service, or I'm believing some one's preplanned spin on the project.
And yet all nine or so "invited" service providers would also have to co-operate and share the data, while hopefully providing a "freemium" service to some minor users, which means there would have to be advertising or something to users, or selling the data which was supposed to be open source.
Turns out, according to DJI, there is no budget for FAA to spend on establishing this system. FAA excluded ADS-B from the drone side of things which means either they don't want to overload ADS-B (Which is contractor operated) or clutter it with non safety of life traffic. But as I think of it, even at low level, it IS safety of life traffic.
I've never known a Telecoms company to NOT turn a profit, even the government owned monopolies, so think what you may.
Ouch... Again, Allegedly …. When I get time I'll publish the links to the docs I'm basing this post on.
Which really raises the question, of "Where is the real time collision avoidance and flight guidance Hardware" going to set? Is the reason why government and apparently part of the industry wants totally open source everything data so that the flight planning is done at each operator's headquarters? A version of what the airline industry wants to go to with no airways routes, so all flights are direct for shortest distance? Who/ What/ When/ Where negotiates what UAS has the right of way?
An even bigger question is how does a General Aviation aircraft or crop duster, or Ultralight or Medical Helo pilot "pop up" into the drone traffic from an uncontrolled airport? Right now in most uncontrolled airspace they just call blind on CTAF, a open traffic advisory frequency.
I can't help but to have a little fun with this:
"Press one for Espanol, Press two for English, Press three if your drone can't get permission to take off, Press four if a unwanted delivery drone is setting in your yard, Press five if your at the scene of a mid air collision or drone crash, Press Six to pay your Airspace Bill, your estimated wait time is Thirty Two Minutes" ATC support from an overseas call center is going to be a hoot, too...
Steve