I would disagree. The public, you and I, own those frequencies. LightSquared owns a license to use those frequencies. I think that’s a critical difference, since it implies that LS doesn’t have carte blanche to use them anyway it sees fit.

That said, you’re definitely right about the issue of receiver design. GPS device makers built their receivers under the assumption that no high-powered signals would ever be in that band (which was not an unreasonable assumption at the time). They, however, continued to design their receivers that way even after they learned that the use of the L-band would change. They claim that they had no idea, but the military and the cellular industry changed up their design.

So back Seth’s point, maybe LS does have a lawsuit on its hands — against Trimble, John Deere and the rest of the commercial GPS industry. Not sure it would succeed, but there’s definitely a case.

You mean rescind LightSquared’s terrestrial network waiver? Yep, I’m sure that’s exactly what the FCC will do, though LS will be able to keep its satellite spectrum. I’m sure the GPS industry would like LS to continue operator that satellite network as well since high-precision receivers actually use its satellites for within-the-meter location. Oh the irony… :)

I see why you would say that but I think you may not have all of the information. LS doesn’t own spectrum it can do whatever it wants with in the sense you are I own property. It bought a license from the FCC to use the 1.6 GHz frequencies for satellite use. The terms of their license states it has to be used for that purpose only, just like a TV broadcaster can’t suddenly start using its airwaves for Wi-Fi.

LS asked the government for a series of waivers that would allow it to change its license terms, in other words deploy a terrestrial LTE network. The FCC granted those waivers but only on the condition that the network deployed would not interfere with GPS, but interference looks exactly to be the case.

So LS didn’t really pay for a mobile broadband license. In fact it skirted the multi-billion cost of such of license since satellite-use licenses have only a fraction of the value of terrestrial network ones. Philip Falcone took a big gamble, which could have paid off huge if he won, but that doesn’t appear to be the case.