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FCC Bars Lightsquared From Using Airwaves
New submitter mc6809e writes with news that Lightsquared might have just been killed. From the article: "A proposed wireless broadband network that would provide voice and Internet service using airwaves once reserved for satellite-telephone transmissions should be shelved because it interferes with GPS technology, the Federal Communications Commission said Tuesday. The news appears to squash the near-term hopes for the network pushed by LightSquared, a Virginia company that is majority-owned by Philip Falcone, a New York hedge fund manager."
LightSquared, naturally, continues to deny that the interference is real.
Don't forget that in response to LightSquared, DirectTV and pretty much every single company that owns satellite to ground spectrum was filing for similar waivers essentially re-purposing satellite communications to ground-base communications and creating the potential for satellite apocalypse as it becomes thousands of times harder to communicate with *all* satellites, effecting weather, hurricane, tsunami forecasting, early warning systems, satTV and radio, etc, etc. GPS/LightSquared was the proxy war for all of these other providers and it's very, very good that LightSquared did not win.
http://www.archive.org/details/XMinus1_A
It was done in 1950's pulp sci-fi. Casinos operated near observatory and the casino firework shows prevented observatory from taking good pictures. Casinos paid politicians, so the observatory was left in the cold. The observatory then started offering "readings based on the stars" for free to tourists, and started singling out a casino a week as "bad luck" for the tourist until that casino stopped the fireworks. It was a pretty good story 60 years ago and stands the test of time.
A Thousand Dollars a Plate
http://www.archive.org/details/XMinus1_A
MP3 version of X Minus One radio drama of the short story.