FCC Finds Bitcoin Miner Interfered With T-Mobile Broadband In NY

An investigation by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has found evidence that a bitcoin mining operation based in the Brooklyn borough of New York City, New York, had interfered with T-Mobile US. Inc.’s broadband network.

That investigation, announced Thursday (Feb. 15), and reported on by Reuters, came following the broadband giant’s complaints about interference with its 700 MHz LTE network. That interference was the result of radio emissions that T-Mobile said were coming from a residence in Brooklyn.

The radio emissions, according to the newswire, came from a user mining bitcoin. The FCC’s investigation found the user was “generating spurious emissions on frequencies assigned to T-Mobile’s broadband network and causing harmful interference.”

As noted by the FCC’s enforcement bureau, and disclosed in an official letter from it, if the user continued to deploy the “Antiminer s5 Bitcoin Miner” program, that operation would be in violation of federal law. Penalties for the offense were listed as ranging from fines to criminal prosecution and equipment seizure.

In a tweet, FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel noted that the FCC’s “letter has it all: #bitcoin mining, computing power needed for #blockchain computation and #wireless #broadband interference. It all seems so very 2018.”

Separately, news source thenextweb.com reported that the technology behind the Antminer s5 “is a few generations old at this point. It’s unclear whether more recent hardware causes the same interference.”