Right after spending the much better component of 2011 fighting against regulators, the wholesale wireless business Lightsquared suffered a killer blow from the FCC nowadays thatcould squash its 4G LTE network plans.
We’ve been hearing from government regulators because June that Lightsquared’s proposed LTE network could interfere with GPS devices. These days the NTIA, an agency that oversees spectrum use, issued a letter to the FCC that claims Lightsquared’s network will indeed impact GPS services, and that “there is no practical way to mitigate the interference at this time.”
The FCC then issued a statement announcing that it planned to reject Lightsquared’s application to build its LTE network, the Wall Street Journal reports. The agency’s selection could nonetheless be appealed, but at this point there seems to be little that Lightsquared can do to convince the FCC otherwise.
In a statement of its own, Lightsquared said that it disagrees with the judgement, but it will nonetheless function to locate a resolution:
LightSquared profoundly disagrees with each the NTIA’s and the PNT’s recommendations, which disregard a lot more than a decade of regulatory orders, and in doing so, jeopardize private enterprise, jobs and investment in America’s future. NTIA relies on interference standards that have never been used in this context, and had been forced by the GPS community in order to reach the conclusions presented today. This, together with a severely flawed testing procedure that relied on obsolete and niche devices, shows that the FCC should take the NTIA’s recommendation with a generous helping of salt.
Lightsquared at 1 point blamed the GPS industry for creating devices that don’t remain inside their required spectrum ranges. The business also said a possible antenna fix could solve its GPS interference concerns — even though now that doesn’t seem very likely.
Reston, Virginia-based LightSquared was founded by billionaire Philip Falcone with the aim of reselling its LTE mobile broadband network, which will cover up to 260 million men and women, to other people. At this point, it looks like that’s not going to occur anytime soon.
Filed below: mobile, VentureBeat 
