A bipartisan bill introduced in the Senate on Tuesday would hold Ligado Networks<\/b> responsible for costs to mitigate all potential GPS interference, not just that associated with government systems, as a result of the company\u2019s plan to build a new commercial L-band network for 5G infrastructure.<\/p>\n
Republican Sen. Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma, the top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, is leading the measure. This builds on his previous opposition to the FCC<\/b>\u2019s decision last year to approve Ligado\u2019s network plan, citing concerns it will place undue risk on GPS reliability.<\/p>\n
\u201cGPS and satellite communications don\u2019t only impact our military \u2014 we rely on it for so much of our day to day lives, which is why we need to take steps to protect not just the federal government from the harmful decision, but all state and local governments, private entities and consumers too,\u201d Inhofe said in a statement. \u201cWhen Ligado\u2019s effort to repurpose spectrum causes interference in the infrastructure of those systems, as tests have shown it will, consumers and taxpayers shouldn\u2019t bear the burden of updating countless systems. That cost should only be borne by the responsible party: Ligado.\u201d<\/p>\n
The RETAIN GPS and Satellite Communications Act, co-sponsored by Sens. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., and Mike Rounds, R-S.D., would require Ligado to cover the cost of addressing any interference caused to commercial devices. The lawmakers\u2019 statement notes that \u201c99% of the more than 900 million GPS devices found in the United States are used by the private sector,\u201d while the FCC had previously specified mitigating measures only to government systems. <\/p>\n
The FCC\u2019s Ligado network approval has been hotly contested. Congress has previously pushed to prohibit the use of Pentagon funds to comply with the FCC\u2019s order until an assessment is conducted on the risks to GPS signals, citing senior U.S. Department of Defense<\/b> (DoD) officials\u2019 concerns on the potential for interference with military systems. Aerospace and satellite companies and other stakeholders that use GPS signals have also sought to stay the FCC\u2019s decision, but have not been successful. <\/p>\n
The bill introduced Tuesday came with the support of the Aerospace Industries Association<\/strong> (AIA), Blue Origin<\/strong>, Cubic Corporation<\/strong>, Esri<\/strong>, Iridium<\/strong>, L3Harris<\/strong>, Lockheed Martin<\/strong>, Skytrac<\/strong>, and companies in many other industries that use GPS. <\/p>\n Iridium CEO Matt Desch issued a statement in support of the bill. Iridium operates an L-band satellite network and has fought Ligado\u2019s plans for years. <\/p>\n \u201cDespite decades of obfuscation by Lightsquared and Ligado, one fact remains: their plans to enrich their shareholders do little for 5G progress or US competitiveness, but will instead impact hundreds of private sector companies that keep people safe, provide innovative services that make consumers\u2019 lives better and serves as the backbone of the United States economic engine,\u201d Desch commented. \u201cA diverse coalition of industries, bipartisan congressional leaders and United States federal agencies are unified that Ligado\u2019s plan is clearly an unacceptable risk that threatens our nation\u2019s critical satellite services infrastructure.\u201d <\/p>\n The GPS Innovation Alliance<\/strong> is in support of the legislation as well, saying that this legislation focuses on small business, consumers, and other civilian users. GPSIA said the FCC has failed to acknowledge the economic impact to these users. \u201cThe RETAIN GPS Act corrects this inequity by placing these costs with Ligado, as the license holder and source of interference,\u201d GPSIA said. <\/p>\n Ligado is moving forward with plans to deploy its network. Earlier this week, Ligado said it has received approvals from wireless standard organization Third Generation Partnership Project<\/b> (3GPP) to deploy its L-band spectrum in 5G networks. This approval will allow Ligado to expand its vendor ecosystem. <\/p>\n A version of this article was first published by our sister publication Defense Daily.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A bipartisan bill introduced in the Senate on Tuesday would hold Ligado Networks responsible for costs to mitigate all potential GPS interference, not just that associated with government systems, as a result of the company\u2019s plan to build a new commercial L-band network for 5G infrastructure. Republican Sen. Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma, the top Republican […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":57247,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-57246","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57246"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=57246"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57246\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/57247"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=57246"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=57246"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=57246"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}