LightSquared: 'There's Too Much at Stake to Walk Away'

Wireless Week ^ | 3-19-12 | Maisie Ramsay

[bigbob]

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 service and suspend its ability to deploy land-based base stations.

The move poses a seeming insurmountable obstacle to LightSquared's proposed wholesale LTE network, for which it had signed up more than 30 customers.

Characterizing the FCC's plan as "legally impermissible, arbitrary, and capricious," LightSquared said it violated its constitutional rights to due process, property rights and equal protection rights.

[bigbob]

Evidently Lightsquared now intends to make its last atand on the basis that corporations should be afforded the constitutional protections and rights of personhood.

We recall the recent case of Citizens United, where the Supreme Court ruled that corporate political spending is protected, holding that corporations have a First Amendment right to free speech, thus opening the Superpac floodgates.

However the court may rule differently, if the LS case makes it that far, since this is not a question of free speech.

[Haiku Guy]

When your airplane is careening toward the terrain because somebody in the back wants to play Angry Birds Online on his LightSquared enabled GPS-buster, remember to thank Obama’s SuperPAC.

[capydick]

legally impermissible, arbitrary, and capricious

[Explorer89]

Someone was being capricious when they issued that waiver to LightSquared in the first place.

[ILS21R]

"I want to make one thing clear: We are not going away," LightSquared regulatory affairs executive Jeff Carlisle said during a call with reporters.

Oh yes you are. There is no way this will get pushed through by November. After that, you and your stupid little game will just be a footnote in history.

[Buckeye McFrog]

I am a person and a US Citizen. But I have no right to force the FCC to allocate frequencies for my use. Where is the logic in their position?

[fremont_steve]

Now - first I REALL?Y hate defending LightSquared here... because I think they are slimy as they come. However, the one point they might be right about is that FCC sold them spectrum that wasn’t useful for the purpose. (Note that I don’t like the concept of selling spectrum either!) So they do perhaps a property rights claim.

[Eric in the Ozarks]

He’s dead, Jim.

[longtermmemmory]

obama is an investor => obama makes presidential edict => obama makes money => problem solved

[longtermmemmory]

the problem is the poor tech. It leaks were it should not.

it is not supposed to interfear with other tech and is not downward compatable. it also is a danger to navigation.

[KarlInOhio]

However, the one point they might be right about is that FCC sold them spectrum that wasn’t useful for the purpose.

Didn't LightSquared's original plan involve a satellite network which would have been a lot lower power than their current plan for a ground based network? Did that happen before or after they bought the spectrum allocation?

[fremont_steve]

This isn’t exactly true - and again I’m being placed in the defense of LightSquared...which I REALLY don’t like. The way the GPS receiver is working - a strong signal adjacent to it is overloading it. The adjacent signal can be spectrally pure and still have this affect if the receiver doesn’t have sufficient filtering to reject the strong signal. This is essentially what LightSquared is claiming as one of their technical defenses. However - you can’t expect millions of existing receivers to be reworked?

Further - those millions of receivers were designed into an environment that didn’t have strong adjacent signals - so why would you spend money on the design to put them there? That would be considered bad engineering practice!

So LightSquare’s argument falls on deaf ears (pun intended) when it comes to this angle. They knew or should have known this problem would kill their scheme.

[fremont_steve]

My understanding is the system is a lot like the XM/Sirius - they have satellite distribution, but on-the-ground repeaters/concentrators.