No Credible Independent Research Backs Up Company's Claim Of
Non-Interference
A statement issued Jan. 13, 2012 by the Department of Defense
and the Department of Transportation, on behalf of the nine
government departments and agencies that use and benefit from GPS
in performing critical functions for the public, represents the
culmination of a year of unprecedented technical effort to evaluate
LightSquared’s proposal to repurpose satellite spectrum
adjacent to GPS for a nationwide wireless network providing
terrestrial-only services.
In January 2011, the FCC’s International Bureau granted
LightSquared a conditional waiver removing legal barriers to this
proposal, but imposed the absolute condition that LightSquared
would not be permitted to move forward unless it could demonstrate
that its proposed operations would not interfere with GPS.
LightSquared fully accepted this condition. At the time,
LightSquared made public representations that its operations would
not interfere with GPS, and the FCC relied upon these
representations.
In a statement released as a follow-up to the DoD and DoT position
paper, Dale Leibach, a spokesman for The Coalition to Save Our GPS
said that consistent with the FCC’s directives and in
recognition of the benefits to the public of additional wireless
competition and services, affected manufacturers, government
agencies, and critical users of GPS have devoted unprecedented
efforts to technical studies to evaluate LightSquared’s
proposed operations. From the outset, these parties have expressed
serious concerns that these operations would create widespread
harmful interference to GPS, but undertook these efforts
nonetheless.
Every set of independent technical studies has confirmed that
LightSquared’s proposed operations would create widespread
interference to critical GPS uses. The test results which were the
subject of the government conclusions yet again confirm the
interference problem. The results also confirm that interference
will not only affect high-precision GPS receivers, but also
millions of GPS devices used by consumers every day in their cars,
trucks and boats. In addition, the most recent studies confirm
interference to critical aviation safety systems.

LightSquared has been afforded every possible opportunity to
make its technical case, and has failed to demonstrate that it can
avoid interference to many critical GPS-based activities. Over the
last year, it has proposed numerous modifications to its proposals,
which it claimed would solve the interference problem. Each of
these proposals has been extensively evaluated and none have been
found adequate to eliminate widespread interference to GPS. No
credible, independent expert or organization has come forward to
support LightSquared’s claims of non-interference to millions
of existing GPS devices.
We welcome the Position, Navigation, and Timing (PNT) Executive
Committee’s unanimous conclusion on behalf of the nine
government departments and agencies that ‘no practical
solutions or mitigations’ exist that would allow LightSquared
to operate without causing significant interference to GPS. At this
point, there is no evidence that any further modifications to its
proposal would yield a different conclusion. Because of this, the
Committee’s conclusion that it is time to end technical
studies and that the proposal is not viable is supported by
overwhelming technical evidence.
Unfortunately, Leibach says, in apparent recognition that it
cannot satisfy the FCC International Bureau’s condition of
non-interference that it accepted in January 2011, LightSquared has
pursued a concerted disinformation campaign to attack and impugn
specific companies and individuals who have been part of the
process of reviewing its proposals. These shrill, irresponsible
attacks are reprehensible, and are obvious acts of desperation. The
technical evidence speaks for itself, and no individual, company or
government body can legitimately be blamed for the clear
defects of LightSquared’s ill-conceived proposal or the
failure of that proposal to pass an extensive, fact-based review
process.