House Panel Says LightSquared May Not Be Worth the Price

"The national security consequences of the LightSquared network are significant,” Turner said. The network could “render useless” the Defense Department’s GPS receivers, he said. “If the FCC gives LightSquared the final go ahead to build out its network, I fear the DOD’s training activities in the United States would come to an end,” he said. “This cannot be allowed to happen.” The national security concerns are “more important than money,” Turner said. “This is about our war fighters who rely on this technology for safety and their technological edge against adversaries.” Ranking Member Loretta Sanchez, D-Calif., supports building out broadband, “but not at the expense of national security,” she said.

It likely would cost billions of dollars to retrofit the Defense Department’s GPS receivers to mitigate interference by the LightSquared network, even if the company used only the lower 10 MHz of its spectrum, said Gen. William Shelton, commander of the Air Force Space Command. The department hasn’t done an official estimate, he said. The retrofit operation could take “a decade or more,” he said. “The LightSquared network would effectively jam vital GPS receivers and to our knowledge thus far there are no mitigation options that would be effective in eliminating interference,” Shelton said. Using the lower 10 MHz would still interfere with high-precision and timing receivers, Shelton said.

DOD has “not received a sufficiently clear and complete description” of LightSquared’s new plan to properly analyze it, DOD Chief Information Officer Teresa Takai said. Anthony Russo, director of the National Coordination Office for Space-Based Positioning, Navigation and Timing, said he had just received permission to do a new round of testing on LightSquared’s latest proposal.

Sanchez asked who would pay for testing and implementing the filters. The FCC’s first focus is determining whether there’s “a fix that works,” said Julius Knapp, chief of the FCC Office of Engineering and Technology. “Whether there’s a way to pay for that, and the timing of it, we would have to be working with the parties to see if there’s a viable solution.” This is going to be “a very expensive process of testing,” said Rep. John Garamendi, D-Calif. “We have a new company entering space occupied by others. It seems to me that that a new company ought to bear the full cost of proving that it is not harming others.” Garamendi asked the witnesses to provide in writing “what your cost of testing will be, and where in your budgets you have that money,” and who should pay for the new filters and antennas if the tests prove they will work.

The recent FCC public notice seeking more testing was “the understatement of the decade,” Turner said. “But we need to know what this public notice actually means for DOD GPS users; this may very well be an effort to push matters off by a few months under the assumption Congress will be distracted by then."

Sanchez said Congress should not politicize the LightSquared issue. “A lot of questions are being placed” on people’s intentions and motivations, she said. “It’s right to question, but I do not want to see anybody smeared about what their motives or intents are, especially our military people."

The FCC and NTIA emphasized their focus was just on the facts. “I really can’t speak to the political issues,” but NTIA can “work through the technical and factual issues,” said NTIA Associate Administrator Karl Nebbia of the Office of Spectrum Management. NTIA will test LightSquared’s proposed filters when they arrive, he said. Knapp similarly stressed that the answer would come down to engineering. “The commission and its staff would never take … an action that would threaten the safety of America’s citizens,” he said. When the FCC understood there was a potential interference problem, “we put the brakes on deployment until we get it fixed,” Knapp said.

But Rep. Austin Scott, R-Ga., accused NTIA of lobbying for LightSquared. “I have never seen an agency … advocate that strongly on behalf of any private sector company unless somebody’s wheel was getting greased.” He said it appeared that there was either “pressure from above or a relationship that was not being disclosed.” But Nebbia said NTIA is not advocating for either side of the debate. “There is an effort on both sides to come to a resolution,” and NTIA has tried to facilitate that effort, he said.

LightSquared, not invited to testify, took issue with several points brought up in testimony at the hearing, the company said in a later letter to the subcommittee’s chairman and ranking member. Most of corrections in the LightSquared letter were aimed at Shelton’s testimony. For instance, LightSquared objected to his testimony describing the National Executive Committee for Space-Based Positioning testing, in which Shelton didn’t distinguish between testing of LightSquared’s original deployment plan and its revised plan. The company also said Shelton’s use of a NDP Consulting study funded by the Save Our GPS Coalition, which seeks to prevent GPS interference from LightSquared, for cost estimates presents a biased estimate. While LightSquared objected to some testimony, it agrees with the “need for further cooperative work,” it said.

Meanwhile, The Daily Beast reported Thursday that the White House, through the Office of Management and Budget, had asked Shelton to change his testimony to say the Pentagon hopes to finish LightSquared testing within 90 days and to reflect Shelton’s support for the broadband initiatives. A Wednesday report from the Center for Public Integrity also details emails between LightSquared and the White House seeking to set up meetings around the time large donations were made by LightSquared executives, largely to Democrats.

"Our testimony is reviewed appropriately by [the Office of the Secretary of Defense] and other executive branch agencies via the established OMB process,” Col. Kathleen Cook, public affairs director for Space Command told reporters after the hearing. “In that process it’s common to have edit exchanges and recommendations. But I can assure you Gen. Shelton’s testimony was his own, supported by and focused purely on documented test results.” The process “was followed appropriately from our perspective.” She didn’t “know who in the process, beyond it being an OMB process, reviewed” the testimony.

The White House was dismissive of both reports. “The FCC is an independent agency with its own standards and procedures for reviewing these types of decisions and we respect that process,” said a White House spokesman. “The core mission of OMB is to serve the President in implementing his vision across the Executive Branch. As for OMB’s role, the OMB reviews and clears all agency communications with Congress, including testimony, to ensure consistency in the Administration’s policy positions. When an agency is asked by a congressional committee to testify, OMB circulates the agency’s proposed (draft) testimony to other affected agencies and appropriate EOP [Executive Office of the President] staff. If a reviewer has a comment to the proposed testimony, that suggestion is typically conveyed to the agency for their consideration. When divergent views emerge, they are often reconciled through discussions at the appropriate policy levels of OMB and the agencies.”

The seemingly cozy relations between the White House and LightSquared are somewhat worrisome, said Michael Beckel a spokesman at the Center for Responsive Politics. “It’s troubling any time policy decisions are being driven by campaign cash and connections rather than the merits of the arguments,” said Beckel. “Whether a Democrat or Republican resides in the White House, access shouldn’t be bought and paid for by political contributions. Expanding broadband in the United States is a commendable undertaking, but the public deserves to know the full story about whether LightSquared received preferential treatment."

Turner, who also is on the Oversight Committee, said he would ask that committee’s leaders to promptly investigate the relationship between LightSquared and the White House. Turner said it’s the Commerce Committee’s job to investigate how the FCC conducted its process.

More political fireworks went off Thursday because Genachowski did not testify at the hearing as initially scheduled. Genachowski’s “failure to show up today is an affront to the House Armed Services Committee,” Turner said. “It appears to be symptomatic of a disregard by the chairman to the consequences of the FCC’s Jan. 26 waiver to LightSquared.” Turner said he'd heard Genachowski was in the same building as the hearing earlier that morning. “Personally I believe this is an absolute effort to avoid the oversight questions by Congress,” he said.

"The Chairman never refused to testify nor did his staff make any such suggestions,” a Genachowski spokeswoman said. To the contrary, the committee explicitly told FCC staff that they would accept a designee. We are pleased that our top technical expert was able to respond to questions today.” At the hearing, Sanchez defended the FCC. She said the subcommittee had a “good meeting” with Genachowski last week in which he gave reasons why he couldn’t speak. He also sent the subcommittee a letter Thursday, she said. In the letter, sent to Turner and Sanchez, Genachowski defended FCC process in the LightSquared matter. But Turner called the letter “non-responsive and ambiguous.”