shrug-l: LightSquareds Status

[C. Henry Depew]

Greetings!
      For more information, go to the GNSS site.

The following article was written by Glen Gibbons and posted in GNSS 
on Wednesday February 15, 2012.


NTIA and FCC Agree: No Practical Way to Fix LightSquareds GPS 
Interference Problem

The GPS community received a Valentines Day message from U.S. 
regulators today (Feburary 14, 2012): there is no practical way to 
mitigate potential interference posed by terrestrial transmissions 
from LightSquareds proposed wireless broadband network.

In a letter to Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius 
Genechowski, National Telecommunications and Information 
Administration (NTIA) head Lawrence Strickling said his agencys 
independent evaluation of tests and analysis over the last several 
months led to this conclusion.

Moreover, while GPS equipment developers may be able to mitigate 
these issues via new technology in the future, Strickling added, the 
time and money required for federal, commercial, and private sectors 
users to replace their equipment cannot support the scheduled 
deployment of terrestrial services proposed by LightSquared.

Late in the afternoon, the FCC stated that it would move to vacate 
its conditional permission for LightSquared to roll out an 
all-terrestrial wireless broadband system. The agency said it will 
begin a public process to discuss the NTIAs conclusions and its 
intention to prevent LightSquared from proceeding with its plan.