[07-01-11] LightSquared<\/b> formally presented its modified spectrum plan to the U.S. Federal Communications Commission<\/b> (FCC) that includes a solution to its long-standing interference issues with the GPS industry, the company announced June 30.<\/p>\n
LightSquared\u2019s three-part solution proposal focused on its decision to utilize lower frequencies provided by Inmarsat<\/b> that are further away from the GPS spectrum. The network provider also produced its own testing results claiming that its solution resolves interference for approximately 99.5 percent of all commercial GPS devices- including all GPS-enabled cell phones. While the plan is the latest development in LightSquared\u2019s plan to move forward, the company also used the proposal to lay some blame at the feet of GPS device manufacturers.
\n \u201cGPS device test results, which were also filed at the FCC today, show unequivocally that the interference is caused by the GPS device manufacturer\u2019s decision over the last eight years to design products that depend on using spectrum assigned to other FCC licensees,\u201d LightSquared said in the proposal. \u201cThe GPS device manufacturers, unlike relevant government agencies, have been largely uninterested in finding a win-win solution. This is a problem that the GPS industry could have avoided by equipping their devices over the last several years with filters that cost as little as five cents each.\u201d
\n Consumer market GPS manufacturer Garmin<\/b> struck back at LightSquared, claiming that the company has no standing to shift responsibility back on manufacturers. Garmin engineers kicked off a debate on the issue in February by filing results of an interference test with the FCC.
\n\u201cBefore the Working Group\u2019s testing began, LightSquared insisted that its transmission would not affect the GPS signal. Garmin\u2019s own test results indicated otherwise. LightSquared then suggested that it had a filter on its transmitters that would solve any possible jamming issues. The Technical Working Group\u2019s test results indicate that this filter will do little if anything to end LightSquared\u2019s interference. In fact, there is no evidence that any effective filter solution currently exists for LightSquared transmitters or GPS receivers, and even if an effective one could be developed, it is years away from implementation,\u201d Garmin said in a company statement.
\n LightSquared said that despite the GPS industry\u2019s claims, the FCC does not face a stark choice between GPS service and its 4G LTE network and that it cannot solve this problem without the cooperation of the GPS industry, however, its tone in the proposal suggests that cooperation is a long way off. \u201cLightSquared believes cooperation is the least to expect from an industry that built a business by piggy-backing on the federal government\u2019s GPS network without any investment in infrastructure or spectrum. A recent Brattle Group study showed that the commercial GPS industry\u2019s ability to use the U.S. government\u2019s GPS network amounts to an $18 billion federal subsidy.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
[07-01-11] LightSquared formally presented its modified spectrum plan to the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) that includes a solution to its long-standing interference issues with the GPS industry, the company announced June 30. LightSquared\u2019s three-part solution proposal focused on its decision to utilize lower frequencies provided by Inmarsat that are further away from the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"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-84591","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84591"}],"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=84591"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84591\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=84591"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=84591"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=84591"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}