GPS Under Siege: Lightsquared ‘Solution’ Is Unacceptable

The ongoing saga over the use of GPS satellites to deliver high-speed Internet to rural America took an interesting twist in recent days. Lightsquared, the company that’s working on the broadband project, has been under siege by agriculture and construction companies for its plan to use a portion of the GPS satellite spectrum to broadcast the Internet.

Recently, Lightsquared announced that it would be moving its signal farther away from the GPS spectrum to an area it had earmarked for future expansion to try to settle the issue, but the move has not satisfied anyone on the GPS side. (for my original post on the issue, click here).

Barry Schaffter, senior vice president and chief information officer at Deere, recently released the following comments. These were composed before the recent Lightsquared announcement, but Deere says they still apply:

“The use of GPS technology is vital to thousands of people who make their living with agricultural and construction equipment. It is not acceptable to allow interference to these important industries when there is no practical solution to mitigate the problem of interference.  Degradation of GPS signals could significantly erode the strong competitive position of U.S. farmers in the global agriculture economy. The estimates of the negative impact for U.S. farmers range from $14 to $30 billion annually. GPS technology is also very important to many construction contractors. Ensuring continued use of an accurate Global Positioning System is vital for these industries.”

Schaffter said it is important to note that John Deere is in favor of additional broadband services for rural America, which could be one of the outcomes of the current proposal before the FCC. However,  Deere believes there is no practical solution to avoid or substantially mitigate the interference caused by the proposed new system. Deere notes that the National Executive Committee for Space-Based Positioning, Navigation, and Timing, which is a U.S. government organization, has recently released a technical study, concluding that the FCC should rescind its conditional approval for the proposal because of the significant detrimental impacts to all government and commercial GPS applications assessed as part of the study.

Jim Kirkland, Vice President and General Counsel of Trimble, was more direct:

“This latest gambit by LightSquared borders on the bizarre. Last week LightSquared unilaterally delayed filing of the study report that culminated months of intensive work to evaluate interference to GPS, because they purportedly needed two more weeks to analyze the results.   Days later, well before the report is scheduled to be filed, LightSquared unilaterally announces that it has found a ‘solution.’

“LightSquared’s supposed solution is nothing but a ‘Hail Mary’ move. Confining its operation to the lower MSS (Mobile Satellite Service) band still interferes with many critical GPS receivers in addition to the precision receivers that even LightSquared concedes will be affected. The government results submitted to date already prove this, and the study group report will also confirm this. It is time for LightSquared to move out of the MSS band.”

Clearly, the battle is far from over and agriculture technology companies are closely monitoring the situation and weighing in with the FCC, who will ultimately decide how things move forward. Check back here for updates, and go to the Coalition to Save Our GPS website for up to the minute information.