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TAG: FCC

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Expert Advice: MSS Misinformation, and Ten Truths

December 1, 2011

LightSquared is currently conducting a public campaign intended to persuade federal regulators to approve a nationwide broadband service that would be detrimental to users and applications that depend on GPS. The campaign relies on misinformation, revisionist history, half-truths, and clear misstatements of fact. To understand the effort to convince regulators and legislators that the experts are wrong, one must consider 10 basic truths.


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This article is tagged with , , , and posted in From the Magazine, Opinions
Image: GPS World

FCC’s Future Location Requirements, Apple iPhone 4S

October 12, 2011

The FCC said that all wireless carriers, including voice-over-IP service and landline providers, are required to integrate GPS into phones by 2018 — and subsequently rushed to reverse, er, clarify itself. In other news, Apple rolled out the newest iPhone, and Intel bought Telmap, which has made inroads into the LBS market with its partnerships with carriers.


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This article is tagged with , , , , and posted in Mobile, Opinions
Image: GPS World

LightSquared: The Ball is in the FCC’s Court

August 18, 2011

The FCC’s public comment period regarding the LightSquared/GPS interference issue has ended and the reply comment period is over as well. To date, more than 3,300 comments were entered that the FCC must sift through and arrive at some sort of conclusion. Following are my last comments filed with the FCC as well as my best guess at where this is heading.


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This article is tagged with , , and posted in Opinions, Survey
Image: GPS World

Out in Front: A Pawn in Their Game

August 1, 2011

Maybe we got played. But we put up a good fight. We really had no option to do anything but fight. So we did, and we’re still fighting the LightSquared attack on the GPS signal. It’s not over yet, not by a long shot. Suspicions now creep in that the attack may have been a feint, that the company never really intended to do what it threatened: broadcast a very powerful signal from ground towers, on a frequency immediately adjacent to the GPS signal. LightSquared had its eye on another prize instead.


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This article is tagged with , , , and posted in From the Magazine, Opinions
Image: GPS World

Expert Advice: Who Won?

August 1, 2011

Thousands of man hours and millions of dollars later, we finally have the 975-page GPS Technical Working Group (TWG) report, confirming what five minutes of back-of-the-envelope calculation predicted. Hooray for our side, good job GPS Industry Council; we’ve won the war and the foe is vanquished, never to brighten our skies again. Well, maybe. LightSquared is now bypassing the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and submitting technical papers directly to the United Nation’s International Telecommunications Union (ITU) Working Party that handles mobile satellite services (MSS) and radio determination satellite service (RDSS spectrum) and orbits (ITU-R WP 4C).


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This article is tagged with , , and posted in From the Magazine, Opinions
Image: GPS World

LightSquared: Comments I Submitted to the FCC

July 28, 2011

Okay, folks, this is where the rubber meets the road. The FCC LightSquared public comment period ends this Saturday. If you use GPS, it would be very wise to submit your comments today. Don’t expect the FCC to make a rational decision. LightSquared has an amazing amount of political influence, and you can see that in the support they receive from state legislators, mayors, chiefs of police, etc. In this article, I’ll show you how to submit your comments to the FCC in just five minutes. I’ll also show comments I’m submitting to the FCC.


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This article is tagged with , , and posted in Opinions, Survey
Image: GPS World

Final Report of FCC Working Group: Lose LightSquared from L-Band

July 6, 2011

“Based on the analysis performed, LightSquared should not be permitted to use the L-Band spectrum for a densely-deployed, non-integrated terrestrial-only network. Such a network would cause unacceptable interference to GPS operations, wiping out an installed base of over 500 million units used in a wide array of public safety, aviation, industrial and consumer applications. While mitigation techniques utilizing filters were discussed in theory, they could not be tested as part of the WG effort because filters do not exist, even in prototypes. No information considered by the WG demonstrated that any mitigation techniques — other than relocation of the proposed terrestrial network to an alternative band — would be successful.” (From the U.S. GPS Industry Council’s overview of the WG report)


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This article is tagged with , and posted in GNSS, OEM
Image: GPS World

Letters to the Editor: LightSquared Satellite Case Skimpy

July 1, 2011

Thank you for the story “LightSquared, FCC Rebuttals Distort Record” (see www.gpsworld.com/distort). One thing worth clarifying: you state, “It appears that the purpose of Lightsquared’s satellite service is, now, to provide ancillary service in remote areas not covered by the ubiquitous primary terrestrial network, or in the event that the terrestrial network is destroyed — exactly the opposite of what the FCC authorized and the GPS industry had understood and agreed to.”


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This article is tagged with , , and posted in From the Magazine, Opinions
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