Following the announcement of a public consultation by the FCC on LightSquared’s alleged interference issues, mobile operator Sprint Nextel has again agreed to give the satellite/terrestrial venture more time to address the issues associated with the…
Following the announcement of a public consultation by the FCC on LightSquared’s alleged interference issues, mobile operator Sprint Nextel has again agreed to give the satellite/terrestrial venture more time to address the issues associated with the 1.6GHz spectrum.
LightSquared now has until “mid-March” to gain regulatory approval to deploy its network, a Sprint spokesperson said.
In July 2011, the two companies had announced a far-reaching infrastructure sharing agreement. Under the agreement LightSquared would pay Sprint US$9bn for spectrum hosting and network services, while Sprint would be able to acquire up to 50% of LightSquared’s expected L band (1.6GHz) spectrum.
The agreement originally had a deadline of 31 December 2011 for LightSquared to get regulatory approval. On 31 December, Sprint extended the deadline for a further 30 days and this deadline has now been extended again.
“At the end of 2011, Sprint and LightSquared jointly decided to pull back on expenses and stop new deployment design and implementation. All work has been halted,” the Sprint spokesman said.
FCC looks for comments on LightSquared
Friday last week the FCC formally invited public comments on a petition by satellite/terrestrial venture LightSquared, which calls on the regulator to declare that GPS devices are not entitled to protection from interference from LightSquared’s network.
The FCC set a deadline of 27 February for interested parties to provide comments. A further deadline to respond to those comments will expire on 13 March.
LightSquared welcomed the FCC’s announcement.
A spokesman said: “If the FCC decides in LightSquared’s favour it would establish with finality that GPS makers are at fault for designing devices that depend on the unauthorised use of LightSquared’s spectrum”.
LightSquared had filed a petition on the matter at the FCC on 20 December.
In a public statement on that day, LightSquared said that it had asked the regulator “to confirm that commercial GPS manufacturers have no right to interference protection from LightSquared’s network since they are not licensed users of that spectrum”.
Speaking before the FCC’s announcement on LightSquared’s petition, Maury Mechanick, a counsel at White & Case in Washington, said that the regulator was in a difficult position regarding LightSquared.
Mechanick highlighted two key questions.
The first of these was the issue of why the FCC gave LightSquared a licence “if the intended commercial operations under that license were impossible to commence”.
The second was the possibility of a “complete sanitization of a significant swath of bandwidth from any possible wireless broadband usage at a time of critical bandwidth shortages for such purposes, if some workable solution cannot be devised”.
If LightSquared were not to be allowed to provide services with its spectrum holdings due to GPS interference, the same issue could affect any other company attempting to use that spectrum.
In a context where many telcos are complaining of a spectrum shortage, this could potentially make a large amount of spectrum unusable.
Mechanick said that he believed litigation would be “the absolute last choice” for LightSquared, but he did not rule it out.
