Fight Continues Over LightSquared Working Group Study

"The FCC has a long-standing record of resolving interference disputes based on engineering data,” the spokesman said. “As is customary, the agency’s expert staff will now conduct a thorough and expeditious review of the report. As Chairman [Julius] Genachowski has said before, we will not permit LightSquared to begin commercial service without first resolving our concerns about potential harmful interference to GPS devices. Nevertheless, our nation cannot afford to let spectrum go underutilized. America’s economic growth and global competitiveness are on the line. The Commission is confident in the public process underway designed to determine whether LightSquared’s mobile broadband offering can coexist with services provided by GPS for the benefit of our nation.”

The FCC-required working group study did little to resolve the fight between LightSquared and the GPS industry as the two chairs, LightSquared and the U.S. GPS Industry Council, reached very different conclusions from the three-and-a-half month study over the viability of operations in the L-band. LightSquared said it can safely begin service in the lower L-band without hurting the vast majority of GPS services, whereas the USGIC disagrees. Those disparate conclusions point to a continued contentious and perhaps drawn out process, say observers.

Genachowski has signaled he is unlikely to make a quick decision on LightSquared, said an FCC official. Among the only things the working group chairs agreed on is that the upper 10 MHz channel of LightSquared’s L-band spectrum is currently unusable for LightSquared’s initial rollout. LightSquared’s revised plans have cost it more than $100 million and “even more in disruption to its operations and uncertainty regarding the timing and composition of its full complement of terrestrial frequencies operating at appropriate levels,” it said in its recommendation to the FCC.

The GPS industry has several complaints about how LightSquared conducted itself in the working group process, said Jim Kirkland, general counsel of Trimble and a leader of the Coalition to Save Our GPS, which aims to prevent GPS interference from LightSquared. More formal complaints remain possible and the industry probably will have “to engage with the FCC and say this process is out of control,” he said. “Its just not working and LightSquared is not conducting itself in a way that is good faith,” he said, noting that the working group never saw the lower L-band proposal in detail until it was filed Thursday. At a minimum, the FCC should say that proposal needs more study before LightSquared moves on, said Kirkland.

LightSquared agrees that some additional testing for public safety and aviation may be necessary before service begins in the lower L-band, Executive Vice President Martin Harriman said in an interview. But he said the testing already done is largely sufficient and clear that interference is much reduced in that spectrum. The LightSquared proposal also calls for a six-month halt on operations in the upper 10 MHz, “putting it on the shelf” and giving all involved a chance to “take some heat out of the situation,” he said. After that, the company would begin discussions with the FCC and NTIA on operations in all of its spectrum and the GPS companies would “begin the process of improving their equipment by adding the appropriate filtering and other technology necessary to reject signals that operate outside the GPS frequencies,” said LightSquared’s filing.

Getting the upper block of spectrum is still in the company’s business plans, though the company won’t “die in a ditch” if it can’t get that spectrum in play, said Harriman. Although it will be “very challenging” for LightSquared to make use of the upper block, LightSquared “hasn’t given up on it,” he said.

The working group “faced an extraordinary challenge of trying to determine if the laws of physics would allow the high-power LightSquared signals to co-exist in adjacent radio spectrum with the low-power satellite signals of GPS over and above the complex regulatory challenges of managing spectrum sharing,” said USGIC Chairman Charles Trimble. “In the end, the laws of physics won out. There is no single, simple solution that can eliminate interference for all classes of GPS receivers in the near term ... Greater separation of the LightSquared signals and those of GPS are necessary if the value of GPS is to be protected and broadband communications can grow to its potential over the long term."

"In these economic times we can’t afford to pay more for basic services -- and we can’t afford to allow legacy spectrum users to block new services unnecessarily -- provided that technical solutions mitigating potential electromagnetic interference can be found,” said Computer & Communications Industry Association President Ed Black. “It is in the public interest for the FCC to insist the GPS community make a good faith effort to work together with stakeholder government agencies and LightSquared toward a compromise that’s acceptable to all. That may involve shifts in frequency use, time horizons and/or phasing out old equipment."

"While the filing of the LightSquared report appears to represent progress in addressing GPS interference mitigation, the controversy is likely to continue simmering for a while,” said Jeff Silva, analyst with Medley Global Advisors. “The report will be reviewed with a fine-toothed comb by GPS device manufacturers and major commercial/federal government users. It will be difficult for LightSquared to move forward until GPS interference concerns of the Pentagon and other federal agencies are satisfactorily addressed.”