Groups air continued concerns about LightSquared broadband network

A high-level federal navigation advisory committee this week said plans by LightSquared to operate a national broadband network in frequencies near the band used by Global Positioning System devices would cause "great harm," and asked the Federal Communications Commission to rescind its conditional approval for the project.

In an Aug. 3 letter to FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, National Advisory Board for Space-Based Positioning Navigation and Timing co-chairs James Schlesinger, a former secretary of Defense, and Bradford Parkinson, who is considered to be the "father" of GPS, said allowing LightSquared to proceed would threaten "our nation's national security, international standing and have a notable economic impact."

The letter, obtained by GPS World, said terrestrial LightSquared transmitters would operate at power levels 5 billion times more than the GPS signals transmitted from space, overwhelming precision receivers used for aviation, surveying and agriculture. "Another frequency band must be found, well away from GPS that allows LightSquared to compete with the other broadband suppliers and does not jeopardize U.S. infrastructure," Schlesinger and Parkinson said.

The Airline Pilots Association took a similar position in a July 29 filing with FCC, stating that interference with GPS, widely used for aerial navigation today and the core of the Federal Aviation Administration's Next-Generation Air Transportation System, "is unacceptable and cannot be tolerated." The organization urged the commission to move LightSquared to another frequency.

United Airlines, in its filing with FCC, said it would cost a "staggering" $70 million to re-equip its fleet of more than 700 aircraft with GPS receivers resistant to interference from the up to 40,000 cellular base stations LightSquared plans to deploy. United told FCC that LightSquared should not be allowed to build its network "under any circumstance . . . [because] of the harm it will cause to the passengers, employees and operations."

LightSquared and its predecessor companies have operated satellite-based mobile communications systems since 1996 on frequencies near the GPS band. In January, FCC gave the company tentative approval to build a national, terrestrial network with cellular towers operating in the same frequency band.

This authorization was conditional, pending tests conducted in cooperation with the GPS industry to determine if the high-powered signals from the cell towers interfered with GPS receivers.

Those tests showed that when operating in the upper frequency band of 1545.2-1555 MHz, the LightSquared system would hurt the performance of a significant number of GPS receivers that run in the adjacent 1559-1610 MHz band.

The company filed a new plan with FCC on June 30 to initially limit deployment to its lower 1526-1536 MHz frequency band, which LightSquared said would not adversely affect the performance of 99 percent of GPS receivers. High-precision receivers used in agriculture, mining and construction would be exceptions.

FCC asked for comments on the tests of the LightSquared system and its effect on GPS, and had received 2,792 responses as of Friday, with heavy opposition from the aviation industry.

UPS, which operates 244 freighter aircraft that rely on GPS for navigation and tracks delivery of packages with GPS-enabled computers carried by delivery truck drivers, said in its filing with FCC that the planned LightSquared network poses "an unacceptable threat to the operation of GPS, and accordingly, to the functioning of U.S. transportation networks, on which the nation's commerce and economy rely."

The National Business Aviation Association, whose 8,400 members operate 11,000 GPS-equipped aircraft, told FCC that the LightSquared network "will decimate the signals in space of the GPS and make virtually useless millions of GPS receivers."

And the International Civil Aviation Organization, a United Nations body with 191 member states, noted that since thorough tests of GPS aviation receivers with LightSquared transmitters operating in the lower frequency band have not been conducted, "compatibility of the proposed initial phase with aviation GPS operations cannot be safely assumed."

Philip Falcone, who runs Harbinger Capital, the venture capital firm that controls LightSquared, told CNBC in an interview Thursday that he believed AT&T and Verizon Wireless, the two largest U.S. cellular carriers, are "working behind the scenes" to derail LightSquared.

Falcone said an AT&T lobbyist headed the industry Coalition to Save Our GPS group, which AT&T denied in a report report by CNET.