FAA Administrator Randy Babbitt said Thursday he's convinced GPS signals will be safe despite a potential interference threat from a broadband company that appears to be ramping up for a full-scale launch in the next few years. Babbitt told the annual Meet the Administrator session at AirVenture Oshkosh Thursday that the issues regarding LightSquared's plan to create a nationwide broadband network and its potential effect on GPS are well known in Washington and he expects GPS to be preserved. "I'm very comfortable in saying that we are going to protect the GPS signal," he told the AirVenture crowd of hundreds. His comments come on the heels of a report written by the FAA's navigation section that predicts LightSquared's plan will essentially destroy GPS reception in much of the U.S. "In the next ten years, it would result in an estimated impact to the aviation community of at least $70 billion and an additional 30 million tons of CO2...," the report, obtained by the Coalition to Preserve Our GPS, and released to the media says. LightSquared says it wants to talk to the FAA about the report and it also slams the GPS industry for failing to build safeguards into its products to prevent interference from signals in other frequency bands. It also announced a blockbuster deal with Sprint Nextel that doesn't look like it takes any regulatory hiccups into account.
Well...Glad I still have my robot...
I just read a release about the LightSquared-Sprint deal. This was the last paragraph:
"LightSquared now reckons it has everything in place to build and operate the network, and claims that it will be connecting people together in 2012. The plan that seemed impossible, or at the very least improbable, now looks as though it is going to go ahead, with only the diminishing cries of the GPS industry standing between the company and its revolution."
frank, something like that has to be posted here...
LS and Sprint deal is moving ahead it seems, a few thousand negative comments are just a mere thorn in their side, there is a lot of BILLIONS of $ being thrown around for those guys to not proceed with a network, maybe it will be in a different spectrum, BUT I have my doubts, I think surveying will be back about 1980 style in a couple of years until GPS equipment is able to somehow overcome the LS signal. There are a lot of different areas that have resulted from GPS, aerial mapping is way different and way more accurate and cost effective, mobile LiDAR (ground and aerial) is dead without GPS, GIS mapping is dead, and many other areas of surveying that weren't even thought of pre GPS OR simply weren't cost effective to do, the whole spatial positioning business is done as we now know it if LS starts broadcasting, yet I can't see with LS and Sprint signing a deal for billions how either party thinks that won't happen and soon, early as 2012.
SHG
Looking back at the back entrance LS made into the market. I really shocked that the other cellular carriers did not jump on the FCC to stop this. Talk about an unfair advantage, LS paid less than pennies on the dollar for the MSS spectrum.
As for the Sprint deal, how will Sprint be able to roam on a frequency so different from there own?
Well, when they flip the switch and no one remembers that the surveyors had concerns that the interference would far greater than LS hinted and 911, car based navigation, airborne navigation, and many other things that we have really have come to rely on start to fail, maybe someone will realize that we weren't this crazy bunch of misfits crying in our beer.
I still think that the first test after the switch is thrown should be putting all the officers and major investors for LS on a plane with GPS nav aids and have them land the plane in the fog. I wonder how many of the LS personnel will be confidant enogh to get on that plane.
Article in today's Chronicle. Telecoms offer rural broadband plan to FCC
So, if I read this correctly they get the federal government to subsidize their operation?
I suppose I am wondering if this isn't the LightSquared crowd getting the Federal Government to fund their operation. I've followed the discussion to some extent, and maybe this isn't connected at all.