Very interesting!
The new 4G network is being touted as the newest, fastest and of course best cell phone system and would seem to overpower the adjacent band coverage of GPS?
Keith
If you lose signal with your DC, just whip out the smart phone and carry on!
:coffee:
As long as I can quickly surf beerleg.com I dont care about no stinkin' GPS!!!
I will just use my gunter's chain!!!
Real interesting comments here by the Lightsquared Rep:
Dan Hays, a consultant with the firm PRTM, insists the technical solution is straightforward: GPS devices need to include better filters to screen out the LightSquared signals.
...
Hays believes it will cost no more than $12 million - or 30 cents per device - to install better filters in roughly 40 million standalone GPS units made worldwide each year. Cell phones, he said, will be fine because they don't rely solely on GPS to determine location and have better filters anyway.
...
Tens of billions of dollars of existing equipment may also need to be replaced, Farrar said.
GPS manufacturers insist that neither they nor their customers should have to pay.
That's because GPS receivers were designed to screen out low-power signals next door, and now the government is changing the rules, said Scott Burgett, software engineering manager with Garmin Ltd.
But Hays said GPS receivers are "eavesdropping on signals outside of where they are supposed to be" - in LightSquared's space.
That was not a problem - until now.
Moreover, LightSquared and the FCC say the GPS industry should have been preparing for a ground-based network nearby since the FCC first allowed backup wireless systems in that space in 2003.
The real dilemma, Hays said, is this: "This is a situation where the neighbor built the fence too far over the property line and may not have realized it at the time. Now the other neighbor wants to build a pool and there is not enough space. So the question is: who has to pay to move the fence?"
He's basically saying that GPS manufactures should have anticipated this would happen and put in better filters, and it's the manufacture's fault for making equipment capable of being over-powered by nearby frequencies ...
And he says it only costs 30 cents to install a better filter in new equipment, but does not address the existing equipment.
Sounds like Lightsquared knows they are screwed unless they can convince the FCC that GPS manufactures have been negligent, and that's the case they are going to make...
