LightSquared turned up the heat several notches yesterday when they submitted an aggressively worded Petition for Declaratory Ruling to the FCC.
The gist of their argument is that since commercial GPS receivers are not licensed by the FCC the receivers are not protected from interference and the FCC has no business protecting GPS receivers from interference.
Furthermore, since the users of commercial GPS receivers are not licensed those users have no standing to protest the interference.
No mention of military??
In a somewhat related action, yesterday LightSquared also submitted a response to the Coalition to Save Our GPS's November filing in which the Coalition asked the FCC to rule that LightSquared's upper 10-MHz band in the MSS L-Band could never be used for terrestrial broadband.
GB
Your television receiver and the radio receiver in your car aren't licensed, either, and the FCC has worked to prevent interference to those for decades.
too bad we never expanded our UHF licenses to cover the GPS units themselves...
This will be interesting. I don't think there should be any objection to LSQ using their frequency for what it is/was originally licensed for... and my understanding of that frequency range is to be used primarily for space/satellite-based transmissions and accompanying power levels with an ancillary terrestrial component where needed.
If LSQ were to use the MSS-band solely for satellite-based transmissions and the "unlicensed" GPS receivers were impacted as a result, then I'd say "shame on the GPS industry." However, conditional waivers are just that... "conditional." From everything I've been reading, the "conditions" of the waiver were not satisfactorily met during the testing that was performed. As such, LSQ should be relegated to using the MSS-band solely for the intended purpose of the band, period.
A recent article from GPS World sums it up nicely.
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Ladd Nelson
if the gps community has no standing, then why are they even in discussions about it?
sounds like lightsquared's lawyers are working thier imaginations and the clock overtime.
> sounds like lightsquared's lawyers are working thier imaginations and the clock overtime.
I'll give them this... they do like to submit their petitions and waivers, etc, right around the holidays.
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Ladd Nelson
Has always been my understanding that the FCC requires licenses for those that transmit signals, not for receiving them.
I think this one will get laughed off by the FCC pretty quickly. And by all means, I hope LSQ continues to irk the FCC with this kind of nonsense. I've learned from experience that bureaucrats just love to be told what they can and cannot do by people seeking their approval.
Thanks for posting that GPS World article. That is the best synopsis of the issues (and LSQ lies) that I’ve read.