U.S. Should Better Promote PNT Competition: Panelists
Faced with an increasingly vulnerable GPS system that rival global navigation satellite systems (GNSS) are eclipsing, the U.S. must align positioning, navigation and timing (PNT) policy with where the commercial sector is headed, PNT experts said during an FCBA panel in Washington Thursday. The lack of a national backup to GPS “is quite shocking,” but no one solution will address all needs, said Ed Mortimer, NextNav vice president-government affairs. He said a variety of commercial solutions are near but they require a policy environment open to competition.
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Numerous critical infrastructure sectors depend on GPS' PNT services, from financial transactions and gas pipeline controls to 5G, said David Simpson, former FCC Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau chief, who now is a cybersecurity professor at Virginia Tech. But DOD's GPS service is increasingly spoofed and jammed, and China's BeiDou system has greater functionality and more backup layers than GPS, he said. Waiting for DOD to address nonmilitary PNT shortfalls is futile as it will never fund those capabilities in a way that keeps them ahead of commercial needs, he predicted.
Greg Gutt, Iridium senior vice president-PNT, likened GPS to the pre-breakup AT&T, when it monopolized long-distance communications. He said the U.S. should avoid that same dynamic, which will make it impossible to implement PNT innovations. Gutt and others repeatedly called for an open marketplace of PNT competition and opportunity. Moreover, they cautioned against the federal government designating and purchasing a particular PNT backup, instead of being tech-neutral. The U.S. must prioritize agencies purchasing resilient PNT technology that fits their needs, with DOT running a clearinghouse of PNT tech it has vetted, speakers recommended.
Simpson said global PNT standards are needed, as that could reduce costs of, for example, smartphone chipsets, and make commercial PNT services more available. Reliant PNT is part of China's 6G objectives and it should be part of U.S. plans too, he said. The incoming Trump administration should ensure that reliant PNT is included as an objective for prototyping and deployment of late-stage 5G, he added. For Mortimer, a potential complication of any effort to create a global standard is that there's increasingly a nationalistic approach to GNSS systems, with nations like India wanting their own as well.
The first Trump administration's executive order 13905, regarding PNT, directed the federal government to test and use GPS-complementary PNT technology. NextNav's Mortimer said agencies procuring such tech should do so within the coming years. In addition, Simpson suggested the incoming Trump administration could prioritize getting PNT backups on the General Services Administration contract, where government buyers get commercial products and services. He also mentioned creating an OMB scorecard that grades agencies on how they have addressed PNT risks. Mortimer urged that the FCC OK NextNav's proposed terrestrial GPS backup system in the 900 MHz band; that proposal has received some pushback from wireless interests (see 2409090015). Iridium's low earth orbit L-band GPS service uses signals about 1,000 times stronger than GPS, opening the door to such potential markets as 5G infrastructure, which often is indoors and can't receive traditional GPS signals, Gutt said.