LightSquared CEO Says Interference Concerns Will Be Resolved
LightSquared is on track to address GPS interference issues within the timeframe laid out by the FCC, CEO Sanjiv Ahuja said Thursday. Other speakers at a New America Foundation discussion of satellite spectrum and wireless competition said the 59 MHz of spectrum LightSquared plans to make available will be significant for the wireless market.
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Communications Daily is required reading for senior executives at top telecom corporations, law firms, lobbying organizations, associations and government agencies (including the FCC). Join them today!
Issues raised by the GPS industry aren’t new and LightSquared has been working with GPS companies since 2003, Ahuja said. “What we agreed to at the FCC’s direction is to work with the GPS group, go through a proper technical testing process that we're in the middle of,” he said. LightSquared has tested more than 200 devices in preparation for a final report, due at the FCC June 15. “It’s a process we are going through and engaging in,” he said. “I look at our cooperation with the GPS industry as an eight-year-old cooperation.”
The FCC has a role to play in creating a regulatory environment that attracts investment in wireless, Ahuja said. “What the FCC cannot do is invest money in building the network,” he said. “What it cannot do is hire engineers.” The industry needs an FCC that “understands and is responsive” to the needs of consumers and industry, he said.
"It is easy to talk about these policy shifts, specifically in Washington, as if they were relatively abstract,” Ahuja said. “I assure you these issues are very real.” Ahuja noted that outside his office on Park Ave. in New York, he often finds himself without wireless connectivity: “Tomorrow the problem will be worse."
Getting the spectrum ready to use for broadband has been complicated but was critical, Ahuja said. “It took seven years to coordinate the spectrum so it could be used for wireless broadband,” he said. “Lots of work has gone in. Lots of time has been spent. We designed a new chipset. We designed and launched a new-generation satellite."
Mobile satellite service spectrum like that held by LightSquared likely will be the first converted to use for wireless broadband, said Michael Calabrese senior research fellow with the New America Foundation. Broadcast spectrum will take three to five years “if we're lucky,” he said. “This means that the 90 MHz of MSS spectrum in the L-band, which we're talking about here today, and the S-band, which is actually less encumbered, are by far the largest bands that could be available the soonest for the next generation of wireless broadband."
Capital to pay for its build out and spectrum are Leap Wireless’s biggest needs, said Bill Ingram, senior vice president. “While we have been able to access capital successfully … spectrum is a dilemma,” Ingram said. Leap has about 20 MHz of spectrum across the markets it serves, he said. “We've tried to keep 10 MHz of that available for LTE, but as our growth has continued we're creeping into that space,” he said. Leap recently signed a 4G roaming agreement with LightSquared.
Sprint Nextel Government Affairs Vice President Larry Krevor noted LightSquared comments promising to bring “fundamental change” to the structure of the wireless industry in the U.S. Krevor said he spent Wednesday morning at the Senate hearing on AT&T/T-Mobile (CD May 12 p4). “We were looking at a hearing about another potentially fundamental change,” he said. “What a breath of fresh air it is here today compared to yesterday."