LightSquared blames GPS industry for 4G interference problem
updated 01:15 pm EDT, Fri August 12, 2011
LightSquared claims GPS field breaking rules
LightSquared late Thursday sent a letter to the FCC (below) blaming the entire GPS industry for its 4G interference trouble. It accused many companies of breaking the Department of Defense's 2008 filtering guidelines for GPS reception. If companies had filtered out nearby frequencies like suggested, they wouldn't have the issue, the LTE Internet startup argued.
It went on to insist that GPS makers had rejected the International Telecommunication Union's (ITU) standards for the same filtering. Device builders were also supposedly turning down the creation of a 23MHz buffer, more than five times larger than the 4MHz recommended by the US defense agency, because they wanted an "irrational" 34MHz band.
The newcomer had been authorized for years, but the GPS field was "squatting for free" on space someone else already had, LightSquared said. It accused the industry of hypocrisy by taking $18 billion in combined government discounts to run private business but ignoring the advice the government was giving.
GPS designers like Garmin haven't responded to the accusations. LightSquared hasn't been opting to wait for concessions and has sent its own modified report showing that it had eliminated nearly all of the interference problems on its own.
The company is under urgent pressure to get FCC approval since it just recently struck a deal with Sprint that will see it spend billions of dollars to borrow the phone carrier's cell sites for its own 4G.
