Says If Manufacturers Don't Participate In Testing, They Should Stop Complaining

Remember LightSquared ... the company that wanted to use spectrum adjacent to the GPS frequencies for a mobile broadband service? Well, apparently they haven't given up on the idea, and have said through an attorney that if the GPS industry does not participate in interference testing, they should stop complaining about interference.

The company recently filed paperwork with the FCC listing 28 GPS receivers they want to test for interference with the service it wants to provide. Included are certified and non-certified aviation GPS receivers and avionics, along with other non-aviation-related devices. Inside GNSS reports that former FCC chairman Reed Hundt, who is now an attorney representing LightSquared, said the testing is "getting underway now." 

LightSquared's business model relies on the FCC repurposing spectrum that is intended for satellite usage to allow its use by terrestrial transmitters. The company filed for bankruptcy in 2012 after the FCC determined that the ground-based signals overwhelmed weaker, satellite-based GPS signals on adjacent frequencies, basically rendering the GPS useless. 

But a new company, called "New LightSquared, has been formed, and it is again asking the FCC to reassign the spectrum license formerly owned by LightSquared to the new company. Hundt is also on the board of that new company, according to the report.

In a filing with the FCC on June 24, Hundt asked the commission to help get information from GPS companies that will allow testing to go forward "to  see if we can find a business and technical solution that helps their businesses and lets us get going in our business.”

But he basically gave the GPS industry an ultimatum. “The first thing is speak now or forever hold your peace." He said if there are devices that the GPS industry thinks have economic importance, they should be pointed out, in confidence, to  technology and management consulting firm Roberson and Associates, which LightSquared has hired to develop the interference study. 

"But don’t think that it’s fair, or serves the cause of justice, to keep the information to yourself and then months later come in and criticize this report. Speak now or forever hold your peace,” he said.

Secondly, he said that an open discussion of "the facts" will help both sides reach a "business and technical compromise that will makes everybody better off."

A planned DOT assessment of the interference issues has been delayed several times, first by lack of funding and then because one of the planned subjects for a planned June 19 meeting had not released a test plan. DOT said in a statement that it  "continues to consider all of the helpful input that it is receiving from stakeholders, and expects to release the draft of a test plan in the near future for further comment by interested parties.”

But New LightSquared is not willing to wait. Hundt said that the company intends to have a plan for going forward in 90 days.

FMI: Original Report