Oregon Republican To Question How Frequency Was Allocated With So Many Issues

The chair of the House Energy and Commerce Communications and Technology Subcommittee plans to hold a hearing to look into the FCC's allocation of spectrum of LightSquared before key interference questions were addressed. In a news conference outlining his 2012 agenda, Rep. Greg Walden (R-OR) said he is "trying to figure out how the cart got so far ahead of the horse." No specific date was given for the hearing.

The National Journal reports that Walden (pictured) said he has met with FCC and LightSquared officials, as well as representatives of the GPS industry, in hopes an "engineering answer" could be found to the problem. But he says he got two different answers from the groups.

Walden says his main question is how the FCC could allow the company to acquire the spectrum in the first place. The FCC has maintained that it did nothing out of the ordinary in dealing with LightSquared, and consistently said there would be no approval for spectrum use until all of the interference issues have been resolved.

LightSquared insists that it has testing to prove that the issue HAS been solved, but nine federal agencies disagree, saying no "practical" measure can guarantee the peaceful coexistence of GPS and LightSquared's proposed 4G wireless broadband network. “I don't understand the process where someone buys the spectrum, put forth by the FCC to be used for a purpose, only to discover later on you can't use what you just bought because of interference issues,” Walden said.

Bloomberg Business News reports that the hearing will also look into the possibility of establishing federal standards for GPS receivers. Walden said he has learned that some may be "sloppy," unable to filter out adjacent frequencies which make that bandwidth unusable for other purposes.

FMI: http://energycommerce.house.gov