Posts Tagged ‘FCC’
Wednesday, May 16th, 2012
LightSquared Inc. recently had lost the approval of the Federal Communications Commission to convert airwaves originally designated for satellite service to spectrum for land-based radio towers in February. The FCC withdrew approval for the company’s network after government tests found that the signals would interfere with global-positioning systems. Now Lightsquared has filed for bankruptcy, saying it “will seek to resolve the concerns of U.S. regulators who thwarted the company’s plan to deliver high-speed wireless to as many as 260 million people.”
According to the story, LightSquared, based in Reston, Virginia, listed assets of $4.48 billion and debt of $2.29 billion as of Feb. 29 in a Chapter 11 filing today in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Manhattan. Besides its head to head battle with the FCC, Lightsquared has had financial difficulties. Creditors have requested that the company’s backer, Philip Falcone, step aside. In spite of that request, Falcone and the current management team will remain with the company, according to company spokesmen.
Bankruptcy “is intended to give LightSquared sufficient breathing room to continue working through the regulatory process that will allow us to build our 4G wireless network,” Chief Financial Officer Marc Montagner said in a statement. Reaching agreements with U.S. agencies may take as long as two years, he said in court papers.
-Bloomberg
Historical coverage of LightSquared in GISVoice:
Controversial LightSquared goes before House subcommittee
Going where no GPS has gone before
Tags: bankruptcy, FCC, geospatial, GPS, Lightsquared, location
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Tuesday, April 17th, 2012
One of the most audacious projects ever to come out of Google was the plan to photograph and map the inhabited world, one block at a time. But a report over the weekend from federal regulators has rekindled questions over exactly what the company was doing — questions the search giant has spent years trying not to answer.
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Tags: FCC, geospatial, GIS, Google, mapping, Street View
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Thursday, January 26th, 2012
In an article in the National Journal yesterday, it was reported that the company LightSquared had come before the Energy and Commerce Communications and Technology Subcommittee because “Tests indicate that LightSquared’s proposals would interfere with global positioning systems. LightSquared says it has solved the interference problems, but representatives of nine federal agencies concluded on Jan. 13 that no practical measures can allow LightSquared to overcome interference with GPS.
The finding, a significant blow to LightSquared’s case, prompted a furious response from the beleaguered wireless startup, which accused the government panel of “a systematic disregard for fairness and transparency.”
Rep. Greg Walden, R-Ore., chairman of the Energy and Commerce Communications and Technology Subcommittee said he has met with representatives from both GPS companies and LightSquared in hopes of figuring out if there is an “engineering answer here.” He said he got two different answers.
The FCC says it will not give LightSquared final approval until tests show that the network can be safely built, but the agency has come under fire for its handling of the process.” –
Walden Questions FCC handling of Lightsquared
[GISCafe Voice November 21, 2011]
Tags: controversy, Energy and Commerce Communications and Technology Subcommittee, engineering, FCC, geospatial, global positioning systems, GPS, Lightsquared
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Monday, November 21st, 2011
In November a gathering of 150 GPS engineers convened in Stanford at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center to discuss the $110 billion GPS market for military and commercial aviation systems, consumer mapping services in cars and automated agricultural machines, among other related industries at the fifth annual Stanford University symposium on Position, Navigation and Time.
A big topic on the table is that GPS is no longer the only navigation and tracking system on the planet any more. According to a November article in Wired, there are four things threatening the future of GPS:
- Next-generation mobile broadband services angling for a piece of the electromagnetic spectrum relied upon by GPS
- Cheap GPS jammers flooding the highways, thanks to consumers worried about invasive police and employers surveillance;
- Cosmic events, like solar storms
- Future location technology that will ultimately push those services to places where GPS hasn’t been able to go.
What’s on the horizon is the new mobile broadband company, Lightsquared, that has been said to threaten GPS signals with interference from a neighboring spectrum. Lightsquared appears at first like it will solve a lot of problems to broadband, by offering cable – like bandwidth to mobile customers through LTE, a next generation wireless service. What’s more, the Obama administration has endorsed Lightsquared – which resides in the same spectrum that runs GPS, which is lower power and gets interference easily.
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Tags: aviation, broadband, FCC, global positioning systems, GPS, Inmarsat, jammers, Lightsquared, location, LTE, mapping, military, mobile, navigation, Obama, PCTEL, positioning, satellite, Stanford University, sun spots, tracking, WAAS
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