Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Spectrum: LightSquared Under Scrutiny for GPS Interference

Senators Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) and Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) published a letter on April 14th requesting support from their colleagues to ask the FCC to take more responsibility for the controversial LightSquared network that reportedly causes interference and even blockage of GPS signals.  The issue, which currently falls into the hands of a subagency, causes great risk to public safety, and would benefit from the care of the full commission. 

The FCC's International Bureau granted LightSquared a conditional waiver to proceed with construction, but the Coalition to Save Our GPS, composed of trade groups and individual corporations, quickly opposed the unprecedented speed with which the waiver was granted. 

The LightSquared website still says the company expects to begin the commercial launch of its network later this year.  The network would comply with the wireless LTE standard, making it more powerful than previous 3G cellular networks. 

Read more at Transport Topics.

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