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Why the FCC halted LightSquared's wireless network plan
Federal officials have nixed a plan by broadband company LightSquared to build a national wireless network. Politico's Eliza Krigman explains why and discusses what happens next.
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Kai Ryssdal: It's been a busy couple of days for the Federal Communications Commission. Not only were there the robocall rules, but the FCC has also announced that it's going to essentially kill what could have eventually been the start of a national wireless network -- known as LightSquared.
Eliza Krigman's been covering the whole thing for Politico. She joins us from Capitol Hill. Good to have you here.
Eliza Krigman: Thanks so much for having me.
Ryssdal: So I have to tell you, until this morning I had never heard of LightSquared. Tell us what that company is and what the whole plan was.
Krigman: Right, that's understandable. There's a lot of people who haven't heard about them. They are a broadband company and they earn satellite spectrum and they had a grand plan to launch a commercial network that could have been a competitor to Verizon and AT&T -- more traditional carriers -- by repurposing the satellite network for land-based transmissions that we need for cell phones, smartphone, the devices that we love to use.
Ryssdal: And it would have been Wi-Fi, right? This would have been a national Wi-Fi system?
Krigman: It would not have necessarily been Wi-Fi. It would have been a wholesale network. It would have been a new model for the wireless industry where if somebody wanted to, for instance, create their own e-book, instead of having to go through Verizon or AT&T, they could have purchased the airwaves needed to power that device on a wholesale basis for a lower cost from LightSquared had they been successful.
Ryssdal: Gotcha. And then it eventually rolls out to the consumer. But the FCC says no you can't do that. Why?
Krigman: Exactly. They have interference problems with GPS. Where they own airwaves is next to where GPS operates and they've been involved in a year-long battle with the GPS industry, with Congress. But ultimately the government is now unanimous in its position that there's no practical solution to the interference problem, so the FCC has proposed revoking the authority it would need to move forward with the commercial network and has set a prohibition on them operating -- period. So basically the conventional wisdom is it's game over.
Ryssdal: That's because obviously if you don't have the FCC's permission, you can't do things in the spectrum. But let me just ask a very basic question: Don't I have the ability on my smartphone -- even though, yes, it's not an iPhone -- can't I get Wi-Fi and GPS at the same time?
Krigman: It's not about whether Wi-Fi and GPS are compatible. It's about whether the specific network they were proposing on the airwaves they owned would interfere with GPS. That network never turned on. But the facts, at least according to the government, show that if they did, it would interrupt GPS signals.
Ryssdal: Got it. So can we now then take it to be that if LightSquared is doomed, what happens then for some cheaper, nationally-based, broadband -- conceivably convertible to Wi-Fi -- kind of system?
Krigman: That's a great question and the answer is unknown right now. But clearly it's a problem. Consumers, LightSquared would certainly say at least, have lost year because they were going to be offering a cheaper network. But the commission remains committed to moving forward with public policy changes that will make it easier for new entrants in the future to be able to accomplish such plans. But it's far from clear how long that will take and it's a bit discouraging for new entrant.
Ryssdal: Yeah. So eventually maybe, but not right now. Right?
Krigman: Exactly.
Ryssdal: Eliza Krigman, she's a technology reporter at Politico. Eliza, thanks a lot.
Krigman: Thank you so much.
As a 30 year veteran of the wireless industry, I have to say mgforbes got this exactly correct. In hearing this the other night I was very disappointed in the lack of reporting rigor and the tone of the piece. First of all, to suggest this scheme would have brought lower priced wireless broadband access to the masses is totally unfounded. There is every bit as good a chance that the price for this service would have been as high or higher than competing services given the technology costs involved. Secondly, as has been pointed out, this has NOTHING to do with WiFi, which should have been understood prior to airing the interview. And lastly, are we supposed to feel bad for a company whose business model was to pull a fast one on the spectrum regulators and then knock out GPS service to everything from consumer's smart phones to search and rescue teams for the sake of making a buck?
Ditto what SillyValleyTechie said: LightSquared's plan had nothing to do with Wi-Fi, except that both involve wireless data transmission. Not sure where you got the idea in the first place that LightSquared "would have been Wi-Fi," but I guess that's a legitimate confusion for a non-techie. What bothered me (enough to come here and register) was that Mr. Ryssdal continued to repeat this misconception even after your guest tried several times - too gently, to judge by the results - to steer you away from it.
Aviation International News, an industry trade publication, has been following this topic for more than a year, and even made the story its Newsmaker of the Year for 2011.
See http://www.ainonline.com/newsmakers/2011/
The spectrum was cut up to prevent this kind of interference in the first place with buffer bands between the operational bands. It also occurs to me that FCC Execs were, or are, mainly pulled from ex Communication Industry Execs with financial ties to their former employers, which means that if a cheaper tech is brought to the market and a loss of profit occurs, the bottom line for the "rulers of the air waves" might not be desirable. Hmmm? Besides if everyone else is held to a higher standard of narrow band technology, why isn't the GSP system being held to the same standards?
I'm astonished that Kai had not heard about this mess until now. I was also a bit dismayed by the tone of the piece. Here's what I understand about it, as a working engineer with experience in RF and digital design.
Lightsquared purchased a license to use some spectrum which was allocated for satellite operations, adjacent to the frequencies used for GPS operation. The assumption was that they would be transmitting from satellites sitting well out in space, not on the surface of the planet. The intensity of a radio signal drops off exponentially with distance, so the presence of powerful radio transmitters out in space is much less significant than even a modest transmitter located nearby on the surface of the planet.
Lightsquared then proposed to build their wireless network on the allocated spectrum, using surface-located transmitters. While their signals are confined to the allocated bands, they are many thousands of times stronger than the weak signals in the adjacent GPS bands because of proximity. Picking a GPS signal out of the background noise is already a tricky proposition, and doing so in the presence of a strong blanking signal can be almost impossible.
Lightsquared argues that GPS receivers are the problem, because they're picking up out-of-band signals, and "that's not our problem." If GPS has a problem, they say, then it's up to GPS users to find a solution, using filters or improved processing. The problem is analogous to when you're driving along listening to the radio near a transmitting tower. Your car radio may not be able to pick up a signal because the front end of the receiver is overloaded by the strong local transmitter. You can solve this problem with expensive band-notch filters, or by moving away from the transmitter. But in this case, filters would be effectively impossible to install on every one of the millions of existing GPS receivers, and you can't "move away" easily when the whole purpose of the GPS is position determination. Couple this with the intent to build a nationwide network of these high-power transmitters, and there's nowhere to hide.
Extensive testing showed a consistent pattern of interference. No technical solution was found which would adequately mitigate the interference. After much hoo-rah among many user groups, FCC has decided to revoke the permission to use this band for the purpose Lightsquared proposed.
Now, one could argue that FCC never should have licensed them in the first place. My understanding is that Lightsquared did a bit of a bait-and-switch, obtaining the spectrum without divulging the way they planned to use it. They exploited the way the rules are written, and figured a bit of fancy lawyering would be enough to get their way. But at the end of the day, the existing user base has a right to expect FCC to enforce the rules in a way that minimizes interference with the installed base of equipment, and that may mean that some portions of spectrum need to be kept off limits to uses that aren't compatible. If Lightsquared truly wants to go ahead with a design that relies on space-based transmitters, I don't think anybody would have a major problem with that. Of course, I think the problem in that case is that it doesn't work for their purposes, which makes the whole effort pointless.
The hedge fund underwriting this whole debacle is understandably upset, and thought they could apply some lobbying clout to getting their own way. Not everyone was quite so willing to roll over and let them, so here we are.
The reason for the non-licensing of LightSquared's network lies in devilish details (reported by NYtimes, but not yet 'on the radio'). Given Ms. Krigman's report, we are left with the impression that LightSquared's proposal is a screw-up that would interfere with the ever-so-useful GPS services, and thank heavens the FCC shutdown this foolishness. The Dept of Commerce's technical report summary (http://www.ntia.doc.gov/files/ntia/publications/lightsquared_letter_to_c... see bottom of P.6) to the FCC reveals that LightSquared's transmissions within frequency bands -THAT IT PAID FOR- would interfere with the operation of existing GPS receivers in the adjacent GPS band, not because of LightSquared technical impropriety but because the GPS-receiver industry (in the absence of government regulations specifying how sharply the GPS receivers must listen within their own band) 'overhear' signals outside the frequency band within which they are supposed to be tuned! So existing GPS receivers fail to perform correctly when an adjacent transmission band becomes active in the way Lightsquared wants to use it. The government (thru the FCC) has long set technical requirements for the stability and 'frequency accuracy' of radio transmitters, but rarely heretofore radio receivers. This will now have to be done. In the meantime, who does LightSquare sue?
Kai: Your references to Wi-Fi are irrelevant. Not all wireless is related to Wi-Fi. Wi-Fi is a LOCAL Area Network (very short range, unlicensed spectrum). The LightSquared proposed network, as well as cellular systems, are WIDE Area Networks (greater range, licensed spectrum). Wi-Fi technology has nothing to do with LightSquared or cellular. The spectrum and protocols are very different.
This is way more than what might have been inferred from the piece; Big Brother government oppressing the smartphone loving consumer. As a smartphone owner and a pilot, I can tell you that there was potential for serious collateral damage to GPS navigation (think full AirBus coming in to LaGuardia) and the FAA heard from lots of affected citizen and business groups and (rightly, I think) acted to prevent LightSquared from proceeding without adequately preventing impact to the adjoining frequencies and "doing no harm". This is what government is SUPPOSED to be doing! Simple solution - use a different band in the spectrum for this very exciting technology. Sorry, LightSquared, if that isn't the part of the spectrum you invested in...
