Slashdot Mirror


LightSquared Hires Lawyers To Prep For GPS Battle

itwbennett writes "Following Tuesday's FCC ruling saying that the company's LTE network interferes with GPS, LightSquared's primary investor Philip Falcone is looking to sue the FCC and the GPS industry. Alternately, Falcone is considering ways to appeal the FCC's decision or even swap spectrum with the Department of Defense."

4 of 195 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Oh come on. by msauve · · Score: 5, Insightful

    You haven't been following the story very closely, since you obviously don't know that Lightsquared got their original approval on a fast track basis, with very little review time, and across a holiday weekend. They knew full-well that their intended use couldn't stand up to any serious scrutiny. If you think that just happened, without their pushing very hard through back channels, you really don't know how the FCC works. Lightsquared have only themselves to blame for trying to short-cut the process, and expecting political pressure to win out over technical facts (although that last one is often a good bet to make).

    --
    "National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
  2. The reason this band is cheap. by splutty · · Score: 5, Insightful

    There's a reason why this spectrum is much cheaper than others, in that it's assigned to satellite communication.

    The assumption being made is that if you license this spectrum, you need to make significant costs to actually put satellites into space, so the licensing is cheaper.

    So they want both now (cake meme), cheap spectrum, but not put satellites into orbit (which their original proposal by the way *did* have), but instead use it as ground based spectrum (which is much more expensive to license)

    Car analogy: I buy a classic old timer, so I don't have to pay road taxes (or much less anyway) and much less insurance. Now I put those license plates on a Hummer and still expect to not pay the road taxes and much less insurance...

    --
    Coz eternity my friend, is a long *ing time.
  3. No, the idiot is you by SmallFurryCreature · · Score: 5, Insightful

    You don't get what a provisional approval means. The FCC said, we don't know if what you want to do is possible but we are not going to say no right away, if you want, you can proof your claim.

    Had the FCC not done this, they would have been a dinosaur, an unmovable object on the road to progress. Instead they allowed a test, a test to prove that what the FCC believed (that the proposal would not work) was wrong.

    It is like a provisional driving license or are you going to claim that if you get a provisional driving license, the state is obliged to give you a full license regardless of whether you pass the test?

    Provisional licenses are pretty common, often you need a license to do something for real but you first need to do it in a test to do but to test it you need a license. To get around this, you issue a provisional license. It allows test and allows people to challenge assumptions but if you fail the test, so be it. Unless you want to sue your examiner for failing you.

    --

    MMO Quests are like orgasms:

    You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.

    1. Re:No, the idiot is you by Andy+Dodd · · Score: 5, Insightful

      You can't prove conformance without test data. You can't get test data without a limited operational license.

      LightSquared was given a provisional operating license to operate a terrestrial network for the purposes of interoperability testing, and proving with that network that they had the capability to expand that network nationwide without causing interference. They WERE given a license to operate at the suggested power levels, and this license was a provisional time-limited one to see if operating at those levels caused problems. Instead of their network proving that it was possible - their network proved that it was IMpossible. The whole point of the limited provisional license was to permit LightSquared to operate a limited test network without deploying a massive nationwide network and getting THAT shut down after only a few months of operation.

      As to "trading spectrum with the DoD" - holy crap what morons. Sorry, when you're talking about a complete network of satellites, the costs of throwing away that network and building a new one are astronomical. Let's not forget the large base of installed aviation and military GPS equipment - getting certification for aviation-grade GPS systems is a VERY time consuming and expensive process.

      --
      retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?