LightSquared Not a Second Nextel, Executive Tells APCO
PHILADELPHIA -- LightSquared faced tough questions from public safety officials late Monday after a presentation at the Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials annual conference. The same question came up repeatedly: Will LightSquared be another Nextel, which caused so much interference to public safety systems in the 800 MHz band that ultimately the FCC had to broker the restructuring of that band. That process still is unfolding seven years after the commission approved its landmark 800 MHz rebanding order.
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LightSquared Vice President Geoffrey Stearn told us he understands why public safety is concerned about interference. “GPS is a critically important service,” he said. “We take this very seriously, which is why we committed to do the testing and a very rigorous testing process. There’s a lot of information flowing out there. Not all of it is accurate and not everyone has had the opportunity to read the thousand-page report that the GPS Working Group has put together. Our goal is to make sure the correct information gets out there."
Once the company has a chance to explain the testing that has gone on so far and its proposal to only use the lower 10 MHz channel in its band, 1525-1535 MHz, many of public safety’s concerns will dissipate, Stearn predicted. He said public safety’s concerns touch on three different areas: Timing devices used to maintain synchronization between different public safety sites that use GPS to receive timing signals, GPS chips in cellphones used to locate callers to 911 and location devices, and public safety radios containing GPS chips. Stearn told the attendees their only remaining concern if the lower band is used should be timing devices, and LightSquared has committed to pay for necessary equipment upgrades if any problems occur.
The issues raised are complex, Stearn conceded. “The FCC doesn’t have to make a choice between LightSquared and GPS,” he said: “They can institute a solution that will allow both to continue and both to serve the very important functions that they're designed to” serve. LightSquared shouldn’t have to perform an endless series of tests before the service is allowed to launch commercially, he said. “How many tests is it going to take?” he asked. “We cannot test indefinitely."
APCO Board Member Andrew Seybold warned the conference that LightSquared presents the same kinds of interference issues as Nextel did. The one difference is that LightSquared will cause a much bigger problem, affecting more than just public safety, he said. The FCC authorized Nextel to promote jobs and competition, not based on sound technological reasoning, Seybold said. “This is déjà vu all over again,” he said, quoting baseball’s Yogi Berra. “This is not about what technology fits in what spectrum. This is about competition and increased jobs and money and all the buzzwords that are out there that are used by people who are doing things they shouldn’t be doing."
GPS is “used in everything” and “any rise in the in the noise floor is going to impact whether” GPS devices are “hearing or not,” Seybold said. “The FCC’s decision to authorize the waiver I think was based mostly on politics and very little on really checking the facts and really doing the homework,” he said. “I don’t believe they did enough homework. I don’t believe they did enough due diligence and I don’t believe that one set of tests proves one way or the other what’s going to happen."
Seybold also questioned whether LightSquared will prove financially viable as a provider of spectrum to other carriers on a wholesale basis. “There’s never been a wholesale provider of voice or broadband, anything wireless, that has ever made money,” he said.
In a second presentation, an FCC official reiterated warnings that the commission’s narrowbanding deadline for private land mobile radio systems below 512 MHz isn’t going to move. The deadline is Jan. 1, 2013. “Getting a waiver is not an easy thing to do,” said David Furth, deputy chief of the Public Safety Bureau. “The standard is very high."