[time-nuts] House subcommittee Democrats Urge Finding a Way for LightSquared and GPS Users to Co-Exist

Charles P. Steinmetz charles_steinmetz at lavabit.com
Tue Sep 20 19:53:59 UTC 2011


Brian wrote:

>the FCC has always been  the 500-pound gorilla cracking down on 
>everybody from drunken ham operators to national networks and 
>2-second "wardrobe malfunctions."  Why don't the FCC and the Navy 
>just get together and say, "screw you, LightSquared

As I have said here several times, the FCC itself has adopted as its 
highest priority finding 500 MHz of additional spectrum for mobile 
broadband services.  The FCC believes that this is absolutely 
essential to the economic survival of the country.  I happen to 
disagree -- I think that 99.96% of the beneficiaries will be people 
playing multi-player games, watching re-runs of jersey shore, and 
downloading porn, and you can't run an economy on those -- but that 
IS what the FCC thinks, and that is clearly what is driving it to 
make many of the decisions it has made in the last 5 years or so.

http://download.broadband.gov/plan/national-broadband-plan.pdf 
(NOTE: 12 MB download)

Interestingly, based on the data the FCC relies on to reach its 
conclusion, even 500 MHz of additional mobile broadband spectrum will 
not be nearly enough to solve the problem it perceives.

If it becomes inescapable based on testing (more of which is almost 
certain to be conducted) that widespread terrestrial operations in 
the adjacent MSS band would seriously impact GPS operations and that 
there is no reasonable possibility of mitigation, I believe the FCC 
will ultimately tell LS it cannot use the band in this manner.  But 
note that under FCC precedent "serious impact" and "reasonable 
mitigation" do not mean, and have never meant, that absolutely no 
existing receivers will be affected.

Best regards,

Charles










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