LightSquared Tries Again

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LightSquared has filed an application with the Federal Communications Commission to revive its broadband proposal without, it says, interfering with GPS signals. According to Broadcast Engineering, LightSquared, which went bankrupt last May when its first application was rejected by the FCC, says it would like to initially use a 5 MHz sliver of radio spectrum it says did not interfere with GPS signals during testing. It also hopes to share a 5 MHz slice of spectrum owned by the federal government to carry signals for the ambitious nationwide LTE wireless system. It has not, however, given up on using the 10 MHz slice of spectrum it owns that was shown to interfere with GPS.

Broadcast Engineering reported that LightSquared “still wants the FCC to consider use of that 10 MHz, but agreed to wait for and cooperate with ‘operating parameters and revised rules for terrestrial use of this spectrum.'” In testing, use of those frequencies by LightSquared’s massive transmitters disrupted GPS signals for virtually every type of equipment in use, from consumer receivers to those used by law enforcement, first responders, aviation and the military. LightSquared maintained throughout the testing that it was the receivers’ inability to properly filter out the broadband signals that was the root of the interference issues.

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