The End for LightSquared?

The Federal Communications Commission will “indefinitely suspend” the company’s license to use its satellite spectrum to build a new Long Term Evolution fourth generation mobile network because it would interfere with GPS systems operating on neighboring radio bands.

The decision came after the National Telecommunications and Information Administration concluded there was no feasible way for LightSquared to avoid interfering with the GPS frequencies and services.

An advisory group to NTIA in January 2012 released the results of extensive testing it said showed that LightSquared “would cause harmful interference to many GPS receivers,” and further testing would not be fruitful.

Investor Philip Falcone has been working since at least 2005 to build the network, spending $3 billion into the effort, which now appears to have ended in failure.

The death knell came in the form of a letter sent by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), which declared the interference to be unavoidable.

“Based on NTIA's independent evaluation of the testing and analysis performed over the last several months, we conclude that LightSquared's proposed mobile broadband network will impact GPS services and that there is no practical way to mitigate the potential interference at this time,” the letter said.

In principle, an appeal is possible, but most observers would doubt such an appeal would be successful. The testing conducted so far, which LightSquared has objected to, has shown significant levels of interference to GPS receivers.

As a rule, in such matters, the new applicant has the burden of proof where it comes to avoiding interference with other licensed users of spectrum that already are in operation. That would seem to be the case here. 



Gary Kim is a contributing editor for MobilityTechzone. To read more of Gary’s articles, please visit his columnist page.

Edited by Jennifer Russell