Free Republic

“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...

Earlier this week there was the case of Solyndra, the hi-tech solar panel manufacturer that went bust last month, despite receiving more than $500m in federal loan guarantees. Yesterday it was the turn of LightSquared, mired controversy over its use of satellite frequencies for a national 4G mobile network, which critics say could disrupt the Global Positioning System (GPS) that operates millions of navigation devices, including those used by the US military and for hurricane and tornado tracking. LightSquared's plans have been opposed by GPS users, including an industry group named Coalition to Save Our GPS, whose members include consumer...