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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."
This idea that the GPS industry "cheaped out on the filters" just won't die, apparently. The fact is, every engineering project is an exercise in trade-offs. Designs must balance the requirements with the budget and laws of physics. When you know the environment, you design towards it. In other words, the GPS makers designed their equipment based on the fact that the nearby spectrum would be low-powered satellite communications. Thus the filters on the front ends of the GPS receivers were built to reject that type of sideband interference. To do otherwise would not not be the correct design decision.
If everyone had to design their RF sections as you imply, every radio receiver in the world would need a 500 dB/decade "brick wall" filter to reject possibly ANY signal not included in its passband. These filters would be so large and complex as to render mobile devices impractical. The costs involved would make such devices too expensive to sell.
Please do not continue to drink the Lightsquared kool-aid. It is toxic.
-- Don't call me "Sir," I increase entropy for a living!
* LightSquared gets an assignment of free spectrum
One they had for a while and with terms explicitly preventing them from using the spectrum for terrestrial broadcast.
* LightSquared invests tons of money
Irrelevent.
* The GPS industry has been violating FCC rules by not filtering out non-GPS spectrum _as they are required to_ on all devices. Independent tests say 75% are not FCC-compliant
LOL what rules? You don't need to meet any GPS specific requirements or approval specific to building a GPS receiver. FCC only has say over units that transmit a signal.
* The FCC performs tests with models chosen from said 75%
There is no such thing!
* The FCC states that the risk is too large and destroys LightSquared's business model, assets and tells them they are not allowed to use their spectrum.
They can use their spectrum as long as they do it within the limits stipulated when they purchased it including the ATC integrated services rule.
In my opinion, the willful neglect by the GPS manufacturers requires them to fix it at own cost.
All of the points are factually incorrect. Please take some time reevaluate.