Claims Operations Will Not Affect Current Uses, Comments Close This Month

LightSquared has popped up on the radar again, and this time the company which has been trying for some time to establish a wireless 4G LTE data network is proposing to share spectrum with NOAA weather balloons. The company entered bankruptcy earlier this year after its original proposal was found to cause unacceptable interference with GPS. 

The proposal was made back on September 5th. According to the Government Technology website, LightSquared has proposed that it be allowed to share frequencies at 1675-1680 MHz ... which is just above its approved satellite bandwidth ... for the terrestrial transmitters it says are necessary for the network to be viable. The spectrum is currently used by NOAA for data transmission from weather balloons. LightSquared said its operations would not be disruptive to the government functions.

In its FCC filing, LightSquared proposes “permanently relinquishing” its “right to deploy terrestrial downlink operations at 1545-1555 MHz and permanently relocating those terrestrial operations instead to 1670-1680 MHz.” LightSquared states that doing so "will provide GPS receivers with an additional 10 MHz guardband from terrestrial services and will allow LightSquared to deploy its broadband network."

The FCC says interested parties must file petitions to deny or comments no later than December 17, 2012.

FMI: www.fcc.gov/document/lightsquared-subsidiary-llc-2