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LightSquared CEO Resigns Amid Appearance of Bribery
New submitter msauve writes "LightSquared, the company who's request to use make use of spectrum in a way likely to interfere with GPS was recently denied, has suffered another setback. CEO Sanjiv Ahuja has now resigned, only a week after a report detailing political contributions and the personal financial interests of Obama and officials in his administration in SkyTerra, the precursor company to LightSquared.
Ahuja's one and only contribution to the Democratic Party occurred on the same day he tried to arrange a meeting with Obama administration officials, apparently as part of LightSquared's desire to fast track FCC approval of a change beneficial to the company."
He attempt to do what many /.ers say happen all the time, and got busted.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Actually... this keeps happening when people try to buy Obama. He got burned by his dealings with Rezzko and has been really strict about reporting and clean hands accounting since.
-GiH
Because there isn't anything to prove, it's basic physics. But to appease shills like you, they did do that test.
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
Seriously? Chris Dodd basically dick-smacked the entire concept of "bribing government is bad" into non-existence, but they force this guy out?
I guess that "contribution" wasn't big enough.
You've obviously not been looking hard enough. The Ars Technica article sums up the science behind it pretty well (basically, they did a test run of the terrestrial base-stations and it interfered with ~75% of GPS devises, after LightSquared reduced the stations power to try to fix the problem). There is a ton of proof that they actually interfere with GPS signals, namely, actual experiments.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
"the intended effect (fast track approval) didn't happen."
Actually, it did, in a way. The fast track process was started, the filing was accepted in one day (a process which normally takes months). The normally required 30 day comment period was reduced by the FCC to an effective 5 1/2 days (it was 10 days, but across a long US holiday weekend). Granted, the actual approval didn't end up happening, but not because the FCC didn't try to help them out. It was an alert CTIA which filed an extension request, and alerted GPS users of the potential issues.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Rejected? Rejected is a bit of a strong word. Try deferred until they met certain conditions like raising further outside capital.
Which they met.
And no, it was not Bush's fault. Nobody is saying that. They are saying that Bush originated the program, and that Solyndra was a fast-track candidate, but fault is distinct from the clarification. When it comes to fault, It was China's. Because China massively subsidized their own solar industry.
However, Solyndra DID build their factory, they DID follow through on what they claimed to do, so you know what? The people who claim it was a fraud and a scam are wrong.
For them to offer conditional approval later shows someone was pushing for Lightsquared to succeed.
They appear to be crooks and what they're doing was a dumb idea from a tech standpoint ... but... from personal experience the FCC will license almost anyone to do almost anything on a conditional experimental non-interfering basis. I know this goes against /. group think about the govt, but at least WRT to temporary conditional experimental licenses the FCC has always been very libertarian, perhaps the most so of all the fedgov, maybe more than all the rest of the fedgov put together.
The way its supposed to work, for a real world example, is 20 ham radio guys who know what they're doing, get a temporary experimental license to F around near the now unused traditional 500 KHz marine radio band, mostly trying to figure out how they can do it without interfering with any remaining primary users (if any?). Then the experiment ends and everyone goes away, more or less happy. Someday, maybe Very Soon the data those guys gathered will get the hams a 500 KHz allocation ... or maybe not. What LS did instead of basically a big lab experiment, was get their standard off the shelf FCC response of "go out there, F around, and for gods sake don't break anything and stop the moment I tell you to" permission slip that anyone else can get for the asking, and then used it to raise Billions of dollars and make campaign contributions and then started crying unfair when it turns out it didn't work out.
Its not like the FCC was "pushing" just for LS, they pretty much rubber stamp any non-totally stupid experimental request. LS is just crying because the experiment failed and they owe Billions and though thousands in campaign contributions would fix it. Millions in bribes might have. But thousands? Not gonna work.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger