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FCC To Hear LightSquared Petition

Washington –
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) agreed to consider LightSquared’s request
that it declare GPS devices are not entitled to interference protection from the
LightSquared’s planned 4G network as long as the network operates within
FCC-established technical requirements.

The FCC asked
for comments by Feb. 27 and for responses to those comments by March 13.

LightSquared,
which wants to establish a terrestrial 4G LTE network in a satellite-radio
band, contended that GPS makers sell “unlicensed and poorly designed” receivers
that listen in on its spectrum.

For its part,
the GPS industry has asked the FCC to declare that “the GPS community is not
required to share responsibility for resolving interference issues” with LightSquared,
the FCC noted. The industry’s petition contends that LightSquared “is required
to protect GPS receivers from interference caused by such terrestrial
operations and that the Commission has placed the obligation to resolve harmful
interference on [LightSquared],” the FCC said.

To further
complicate the matter, a law passed in late 2011 prevents the FCC from
green-lighting LightSquared’s network until it “has resolved concerns of
potential widespread harmful interference by such commercial terrestrial operations
to commercially available global positioning system devices,” the FCC noted.

A year ago,
the FCC approved LightSquared’s planned network on the condition that the
company “would work with the GPS community to resolve concerns raised about
potential interference to GPS receivers and devices,” the FCC said.

Results from
an initial batch of FCC-ordered tests on consumer-oriented GPS devices have
been submitted to the
National Telecommunications and Information Administration for analysis,
and another round of tests is in the works for GPS devices used in
high-precision applications used
in the aviation, agriculture, construction, engineering, surveying and other
industries.

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