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Top government officials said Friday that there are "no practical solutions" to GPS interference problems caused by LightSquared's planned mobile broadband network, signaling that the venture-backed company may have to abandon its plans to deploy LTE service in spectrum near to GPS bands. "There appear to be no practical solutions or mitigations that would permit the LightSquared broadband service, as proposed, to operate in the next few months or year without significantly interfering with GPS," Defense Department Deputy Secretary Ashton Carter and Transportation Department Deputy Secretary John Porcari said in a letter to NTIA Administrator Lawrence Strickling. "As a result,...

US regulators sued hedge fund billionaire Philip Falcone for fraud Wednesday, accusing him of taking $113 million from a fund to pay his taxes. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) said Falcone, who raked in billions betting against packaged mortgage securities ahead of the US real-estate crash, took clients' money from funds run by his Harbinger Capital Partners to pay his personal taxes.It also said Falcone illegally manipulated bond prices, traded preferential treatment to investors who backed a controversial board initiative, and broke restricted period trading rules in three initial public offerings to make money on short sales.

LightSquared made it clear on Friday that it's not going down without a fight. The FCC's decision to stop it from launching its wireless network violated its constitutional rights, it said, vowing to find a way to move forward. "I want to make one thing clear: We are not going away," LightSquared regulatory affairs executive Jeff Carlisle said during a call with reporters. "We know there's too much at stake here to just walk away." After LightSquared was unable to fix major problems with GPS interference, the FCC decided last month to void LightSquared's waiver for its wholesale terrestrial-satellite LTE...

Wireless start-up LightSquared plans to fight the Federal Communications Commission's (FCC) move to reject its proposed nationwide 4G network, a company official told The Hill. Jeff Carlisle, LightSquared's vice president for regulatory affairs, said the company will file a formal comment with the FCC urging the agency not to follow through on its proposal to "indefinitely suspend" LightSquared's authority to operate cell towers. The FCC announced the decision Tuesday night after the president's top adviser on telecom issues concluded there is "no practical way" to prevent LightSquared's network from disrupting GPS devices, including those used in flight safety. When...

National Journal calls it "a colossal fall from grace", but it comes only as a political surprise that the FCC acted yesterday to kill off the LightSquared proposal. After an extraordinary one-year grace period to resolve the interference issues of its network with existing GPS systems, the FCC reluctantly admitted that “no practical way” to fix the basic problem of high-powered terrestrial broadcasts on a spectrum slice intended for low-power satellite communications (via Instapundit): The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) moved to reject LightSquared’s planned wireless network on Tuesday after the president’s top adviser on telecom issues said there is “no...

In a major victory for the National Legal and Policy Center, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) yesterday reversed itself and revoked a controversial waiver it had granted LightSquared, which would have allowed the company to deploy a national wireless network. The reversal is not only a major setback for LightSquared's billionaire owner Phil Falcone, but puts a harsh spotlight on the role of FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski. According to Cecelia Kang of the Washington Post Tech blog : The FCC's decision is expected to all but end LightSquared's aspirations to provide mobile broadband services via satellite airwaves -- a...

Phil Falcone, the billionaire hedge fund manager whose firm made $11bn (£6.9bn) from the sub-prime crisis, is being sued by investors after a $3bn bet to create a US-wide mobile broadband service appeared to hit the buffer.Mr. Falcone, chief investment officer of Harbinger Capital Partners, stands accused of misleading investors over its decision to invest in the service through its acquisition of LightSquared. Court filings lodged in New York accuse him and one of the firm's investment funds of investing in LightSquared even though the original aim of the fund was to invest in distressed debt and sub-prime mortgages. ...The...

Billionaire Phil Falcone, whose cozy relationship with the Obama Administration was first exposed by NLPC, may face civil fraud charges by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). According to a filing yesterday by Harbinger Group Inc., Falcone and two other directors have received "Wells Notices," meaning that they are under investigation. Falcone is the Chairman, CEO and primary investor in Harbinger Group Inc., a hedge fund. Reportedly, other Harbinger investors include Soros Fund Management. Harbinger owns LightSquared, which has received an unusual waiver from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to deploy a national 4G wireless network. Media reports have...

Jeff Carlisle, LightSquared's vice president of regulatory affairs and public policy, accused the Global Positioning System (GPS) industry of trying to manufacture a political scandal to discredit his wireless company on Wednesday. "[GPS companies] have completely mischaracterized the political donations [LightSquared investor] Phil Falcone and our CEO [Sanjiv Ahuja] have made," Carlisle said after a House Small Business Committee hearing. When asked whether he believes the GPS industry has pushed negative political stories about LightSquared, Carlisle said, "There's no doubt in my mind. Of course they have. It's not like this stuff just shows up for no reason whatsoever." Republican...

The billionaire backer of a wireless company accused of using White House connections to interfere with a Pentagon commander’s congressional testimony last week emphatically rejected that and other charges relating to the embattled firm on Monday. In an exclusive interview with Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly, private equity titan Phil Falcone – the chief investor in LightSquared, a Virginia-based firm aiming to establish a new wireless broadband network – rejected as “absolutely false” allegations that LightSquared had obtained in advance the written testimony of Air Force Gen. William Shelton.

“GPS receivers were quite purposefully designed to operate in a portion of the radio frequency spectrum deliberately maintained as a “quiet neighborhood,” with neighboring frequencies primarily occupied by signals of comparable power levels, all based on widely accepted understanding of previous FCC rules and intent. The proposed LightSquared transmitters will produce received signal strengths five billion times stronger than the GPS received signal.” "Some have suggested GPS equipment can be redesigned for greater filtering to mitigate the interference, but even if this is possible, we believe it would involve substantial financial cost and likely degrade the accuracy of high performance...

Last week, Air Force General William Shelton, Commander of Air Force Space Command, told Congressional leaders in a closed-door session that the White House tried to pressure him to change his testimony to favor a company that turns out to be a major donor to the Democratic Party. LightSquared, a Virginia-based broadband satellite company, has been vying for permission to operate in a frequency band in the vicinity of our nation’s GPS system. In Gen Shelton’s presentation to Congress, he went prepared to warn of the dangers the LightSqaured project would pose to our GPS integrity. He said the White...

Allegations that we first made in February about White House political favors for a company called LightSquared are starting to get the attention they deserve. LightSquared is owned by the Harbinger Capital hedge fund, headed by billionaire investor Phil Falcone. He visited the White House and made large donations to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. Soon after, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) granted LightSquared a highly unusual waiver that allows the company to build out a national 4G wireless network on the cheap. The deal has been criticized not only for its 'pay to play' appearance but also because...