LightSquared ‘Very Pleased’ with New Round of Testing
Lightsquared is “very pleased” with the results of a new round of testing into whether its proposed LTE broadband wireless network interferes with GPS-equipped devices, CEO Sanjiv Ahuja said Monday at the UBS conference in New York.
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The new round of tests, conducted at Alcatel-Lucent’s Bell Labs in New Jersey, is complete and an analysis of the data should be finished “in a few days,” Ahuja said. The work at Bell Labs followed technical working group tests that finished in June and involved four to five tier one GPS device suppliers, some of whom initially opposed LightSquared’s bid to create a wholesale 4G LTE network, arguing it would interfere with GPS. To mitigate any interference, LightSquared agreed to operate using some of Sprint’s land-based cell towers on the lower 10 MHz of its 59 MHz of spectrum.
"Some of the guys that have been the biggest opponents of LightSquared are building high precision devices that work with it,” Ahuja said. “We are beyond whether it can be done."
With Bell Labs review done, Lightsquared hopes to move into federal government-sanctioned testing in January, he said. The government testing and FCC review could be completed at the same time, paving the way for the first LightSquared-embedded products to hit the market in late 2012, including Sharp tablets and smartphones, Ahuja told us. LightSquared also signed product agreements with a “few other” tablet and smartphone suppliers, Ahuja said, declining to identify them. Among those that have signed on to resell wireless service using LightSquared’s network are Best Buy and Leap Wireless. Qualcomm also is providing chips for LightSquared.
LightSquared’s reports of progress being made in testing contrast with some analysts’ view that GPS interference continues to be a problem for the company (CD Dec 1 p6). Industry analyst Tim Farrar speculated that LightSquared might be sold to satellite partner Inmarsat as its financial problems become “overwhelming” in Q1. LightSquared has enough cash to operate for the “next several quarters,” by which time it expects to have FCC approval for its licenses, Ahuja said.
It will take up to two-and-a-half years to fully build out a national network for LightSquared’s proposed 4G LTE service using Sprint’s cell towers, Ahuja said. LightSquared will either build its network at the same rate as Sprint installs 4G or require a second installation to add antennas, Ahuja said.
LightSquared has “made a lot of progress” in talks aimed at responding to interference concerns voiced by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the Department of Defense (DoD), Ahuja said. LightSquared continues to meet with the FAA “regularly” and “at this stage our level of confidence is very good and the spirit of cooperation is great,” he said. Government testing of GPS receivers for interference is under way at Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico, industry analysts said. The New Mexico tests, which began in mid-October, were designed to determine whether widely used navigation and cellphone GPS receivers are still susceptible to overload interference from LightSquared’s revised lower-power, lower-frequency terrestrial transmissions.