LightSquared asks regulator to exempt GPS receivers from protection

Last Friday, one year and a day after the Federal Communications Commission told startup broadband wireless carrier LightSquared it could not begin operations until it demonstrated its network did not cause interference with Global Positioning System receivers, the agency kicked off a review process requested by the company to determine whether GPS receivers are entitled to such protection.

On Dec. 20, 2011, LightSquared filed a petition with FCC seeking a ruling that commercial GPS receivers fit the commission's description of unlicensed Earth stations or unlicensed wireless systems such as Wi-Fi networks and hence "are not entitled to interference protection from LightSquared operations."

FCC on Friday initiated a public comment period on the petition, with replies due March 15. The agency said LightSquared "in essence" seeks a declaratory ruling that if its terrestrial network operates "in accordance with the commission's technical parameters, commercially available GPS devices are not protected against harmful interference" caused by those operations.

This move comes after LightSquared flunked two rounds of GPS interference tests managed by the Air Force Space Command and conducted by the company, the GPS industry and federal agencies, and the company's battle for a go-ahead has turned into a high-stakes political drama.

On Jan. 13, Deputy Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter and Deputy Transportation Secretary John Porcari said the tests last fall at White Sands Missile Range, N.M., showed "there appears to be no practical solutions or mitigations that would permit the LightSquared broadband service, as proposed, to operate in the next few months or years without significantly interfering with GPS. As a result, no additional testing is required at this time."

LightSquared blasted the Space Command tests "as rigged by manufacturers of GPS receivers and government end users to produce bogus results" in a Jan. 18 press release.

In September 2011, Rep. Ralph Hall, R-Texas, and the six other Republican members of House Science, Space and Technology Committee charged that the Obama administration tried to soften the testimony of Gen. William Shelton, commander of Space Command, who was critical of LightSquared and its potential for interfering with military GPS receivers.

Last week, Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, accused LightSquared's backers, including Philip Falcone, chief executive officer of Harbinger Capital, which has invested more than $3 billion in the wireless network, of pressuring him into giving up an investigation into the company.

Despite all this political maneuvering, FCC said Friday that it still has not resolved the key issue regarding LightSquared: whether or not its planned network of 40,000 cellular transmitters interfere with GPS.

In addition, FCC said it is hamstrung by language in the 2012 Consolidated Appropriations Act, which prohibits it from using any funds made available by that act for operation of the LightSquared network until the company has resolved "concerns of potential widespread harmful interference by such commercial terrestrial operations to commercially available Global Positioning System devices."

FCC said the petition is related to the 2012 appropriations law and the ongoing interference resolution process, and it has incorporated the company's pleading into its LightSquared docket, which has 3,600 filings to date.

LightSquared based its petition on a 1979 FCC order, which said receive-only satellite Earth stations did not have to be licensed. The company maintains that order made it clear "deployment of unlicensed satellite receivers must occur only on a nonprotected basis . . . without recourse against the licensed operator who is purportedly causing the interference."

Although the 1979 order dealt with large satellite dishes, LightSquared in its pleading interpreted the order to include small commercial GPS receivers. According to LightSquared: "Manufacturers and users of unlicensed receivers lack standing to file complaints or other pleading seeking 'protection' from allegedly incompatible operations" in adjacent bands.

Jim Kirkland, vice president and general counsel of Trimble Navigation, a member of the GPS industry group Coalition to Save Our GPS, said in an emailed statement that "LightSquared's petition for a declaratory ruling offered nothing beyond the revisionist history and gross mischaracterization of prior FCC decisions that has been the crux of its case all along, and the fact that LightSquared and its predecessors have never been allowed to interfere with GPS, as the[FCC] International Bureau reconfirmed in its January 2011 waiver order, will again be highlighted in this proceeding."