FCC's latest ruling looks like death blow for LightSquared

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FCC's latest ruling looks like death blow for LightSquared

Regulator suspends satellite LTE operator's waiver indefinitely following NTIA recommendations

By CAROLINE GABRIEL

Published: 15 February, 2012

It's been a long, slow demise, but it seems that the FCC has finally dealt the death blow to LightSquared, and with it the high hopes for a more competitive mobile broadband market in the US, supported by the start-up's wholesale LTE system.

The FCC has "suspended indefinitely" the waiver which allows LightSquared to run terrestrial-only services in its mobile satellite (MSS) spectrum, and a full block on the plan is expected to follow. The opposition to LightSquared has been mounting, with a series of agencies publishing tests showing that its signals would interfere with GPS services in nearby spectrum. The company has fought back bravely with various tacks, claiming that those tests used non-objective methodologies or were even "rigged"; arguing that the GPS industry should take responsibility if its devices transmit outside their own band; and in more conciliatory mood, offering to move to different areas of its spectrum and devise filters to mitigate the impact on navigation systems.

However, all this looks to be of no avail, with the FCC suspending the waiver on the recommendation of the government's NTIA (National Telecommunications and Information Administration). The NTIA has carried out an independent evaluation of the controversial tests conducted by the federal agencies and has still concluded that interference is unavoidable.

"We conclude that LightSquared's proposed mobile broadband network will impact GPS services and that there is no practical way to mitigate the potential interference at this time," said NTIA administrator Lawrence Stricking, president Obama's chief telecoms adviser, in a letter to FCC chairman Julius Genachowski. The FCC then told Bloomberg that it was preparing to withdraw the preliminary approval it granted LightSquared last year. "The Commission clearly stated from the outset that harmful interference to GPS would not be permitted. The Commission will not lift the prohibition on LightSquared," the spokeswoman said.

The failure of LightSquared will be a bitter blow to consumer groups advocating more robust competition for Verizon and AT&T, in the form of a wholesale network which could have supported all kinds of services and providers and extended rural broadband coverage. It will also be a big setback for its main backer, Harbinger Capital, which has invested $3bn in the venture, and to FCC hopes of harnessing the MSS bands as part of its commitment to free up significant new spectrum for mobile broadband. Critics argue that the regulator's eagerness to boost 4G spectrum capacity and competition led it to grant a provisional waiver to LightSquared more hastily than it should have done.

Another loser will be Sprint, which was looking to generate revenue from a network hosting deal on its Network Vision infrastructure, as well as access LightSquared's spectrum to augment its own LTE services. Assuming the project is now dead, Clearwire is likely to see its role in Sprint's complex 4G strategy enhanced again - it has its own challenges in migrating its WiMAX network to LTE and in delivering efficient services in its 2.5GHz spectrum, but it is rich in capacity and could take over some of LightSquared's long list of wholesale agreements (the satellite firm has signed over 30 partners including Best Buy).

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