LightSquared Hires Lawyers To Prep For GPS Battle 195
itwbennett writes "Following Tuesday's FCC ruling saying that the company's LTE network interferes with GPS, LightSquared's primary investor Philip Falcone is looking to sue the FCC and the GPS industry. Alternately, Falcone is considering ways to appeal the FCC's decision or even swap spectrum with the Department of Defense."
Re:Oh come on. (Score:5, Interesting)
While that is true, my opinion as someone who has been following the story is that the FCC does have a degree of culpability here because they were involved in LightSquared's plans from the very beginning, and only issued the death penalty after significant amounts of money had been spent even when the evidence they based that decision on had been available for a significant amount of time - to a degree, it can be argued that the FCC led LightSquared, and that is what they should answer for.
LightSquared should have been told at the very beginning, when the FCC first got involved, that their approach was not acceptable and that they needed a different license and spectrum.
Re:Oh come on. (Score:4, Interesting)
Fine, but how has the GPS industry been culpable for the actions of the FCC? They submit their recommendations and concerns to the FCC the same as any other interested party, but it's the FCC who makes the call, not the GPS industry.
How is the GPS industry to blame for being legitimately concerned that Lightsquared technology will interfere with their EXISTING, LICENSED USE OF SPECTRUM?!?!?!!
Re:What LTE/4G is this? (Score:3, Interesting)
I think in the EU it is on a different band. I have 9 sats GPS reception even when standing within 5m of a LTE base station antenna. If the frequencies were near, the GPS signal being as weak as it is, it would require a black magic receiver to work.
FCC doesn't know what they are doing (Score:5, Interesting)
The FCC has made many flawed decisions in the past. Their approval of Broadband over Power lines is a classic example. All the testing showed that the system would interfere with EVERY radio service in the HF spectrum, yet they allowed the service to be rolled out. The backlash from this has hopefully killed off any attempt to actually deploy such systems, but the FCC is still insisting that it's technically a good idea.
So in this case they have done the same thing, given approval to a system that would cause interference with another radio service, already in use. Only now, they've done the right thing by pulling the rug out before the damage could be done. However, by not making the right decision before letting investment proceed they probably DO owe the investors a good chunk of damages, as they should also owe those in the BPL business.
Re:not quite that simple (Score:5, Interesting)
This idea that the GPS industry "cheaped out on the filters" just won't die, apparently. The fact is, every engineering project is an exercise in trade-offs. Designs must balance the requirements with the budget and laws of physics. When you know the environment, you design towards it. In other words, the GPS makers designed their equipment based on the fact that the nearby spectrum would be low-powered satellite communications. Thus the filters on the front ends of the GPS receivers were built to reject that type of sideband interference. To do otherwise would not not be the correct design decision.
If everyone had to design their RF sections as you imply, every radio receiver in the world would need a 500 dB/decade "brick wall" filter to reject possibly ANY signal not included in its passband. These filters would be so large and complex as to render mobile devices impractical. The costs involved would make such devices too expensive to sell.
Please do not continue to drink the Lightsquared kool-aid. It is toxic.
Re:So let me get this straight... (Score:5, Interesting)
* LightSquared gets an assignment of free spectrum
One they had for a while and with terms explicitly preventing them from using the spectrum for terrestrial broadcast.
* LightSquared invests tons of money
Irrelevent.
* The GPS industry has been violating FCC rules by not filtering out non-GPS spectrum _as they are required to_ on all devices. Independent tests say 75% are not FCC-compliant
LOL what rules? You don't need to meet any GPS specific requirements or approval specific to building a GPS receiver. FCC only has say over units that transmit a signal.
* The FCC performs tests with models chosen from said 75%
There is no such thing!
* The FCC states that the risk is too large and destroys LightSquared's business model, assets and tells them they are not allowed to use their spectrum.
They can use their spectrum as long as they do it within the limits stipulated when they purchased it including the ATC integrated services rule.
In my opinion, the willful neglect by the GPS manufacturers requires them to fix it at own cost.
All of the points are factually incorrect. Please take some time reevaluate.