LightSquared to GPS Users: Drop Dead

That's the essence of the latest guided missile that the start-up cellular carrier fired at the GPS industry and users in a filing with the Federal Communications Commission yesterday.

Multiple tests by the GPS industry and federal agencies this spring revealed that the planned LightSquared network, which uses frequencies near the GPS band, will cause serious interference problems to a wide range of GPS receivers.

But that interference is due to the fact the GPS industry manufactures poorly designed receivers that don't filter out its signals, LightSquared said. The company then asked the FCC to give it the go-ahead to start operation in a mind-numbing 21 page pleading to the Commission.

Whoever is at fault here, the end results could be catastrophic, as LightSquared builds out a network of 40,000 cell towers that could interfere with GPS receivers used in aircraft and for military operations, network timing and everyone's favorite GPS application, precision farming.

The Wall Street Journal reported LightSquared took this aggressive stance to protect a $9 billion deal it signed with Sprint in September to build out its network, and that agreement is contingent on LightSquared receiving a green light from the FCC by the end of this year.

The GPS industry, predictably, slammed the latest LightSquared proposal. Jim Kirkland, Vice President and general counsel of GPS receiver manufacturer Trimble Navigation said in a statement, that the latest filing "simply recycles the litany of inaccurate and self-serving claims that LightSquared has made in its ongoing effort to deny its obligation to avoid harmful interference to millions of government and private GPS users. "