Users of Precision GPS Devices Ask FCC to Reject Revised LightSquared Plan
LightSquared’s revised proposal to open operations in the lower 10 MHz channel of its band, 1525-1535 MHz, is expected to have the biggest effect on a class of high-precision, highly accurate devices that use receivers that make use of LightSquared’s entire band. The number of these devices is relatively small, perhaps 400,000 nationwide, LightSquared officials tell us. Not surprisingly, agricultural and other interests heavily invested in these high-precision devices have been among the most active in protesting LightSquared’s proposed network in recent filings at the FCC.
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
If your job depends on informed compliance, you need International Trade Today. Delivered every business day and available any time online, only International Trade Today helps you stay current on the increasingly complex international trade regulatory environment.
The class of devices includes precision agriculture equipment, devices used by surveyors and some construction equipment, a LightSquared official said. “Their receivers are intentionally designed to look into the entire band in order to be able to receive a satellite augmentation signal, as opposed to building a separate receiver with filtering to do that,” the official said. “It’s designed that way. It has always been designed that way. ... I don’t know why this issue didn’t come up earlier."
The Iowa Corn Growers Association told the FCC allowing LightSquared to offer service even in a limited way in 10 MHz of its spectrum will drive up the costs of growing corn and prices for consumers. Farmers have invested significant dollars in high-precision navigation systems to increase their efficiency and production, the group said in a filing at the commission (http://xrl.us/bk9iis). “Failure to protect high-precision GPS services would adversely impact fertilizer and pesticide efficiencies, yield and variable rate applications. Ultimately, farm operations would have to absorb higher seed, fertilizer, fuel and wage costs,” the Iowa association said. The Nebraska-based United Farmers Cooperative said precision GPS “has played a tremendous role in making sure that we are applying the right products to the right fields in a timely manner,” in a filing at the FCC (http://xrl.us/bk9ijz) making a similar argument.
"Our systems, spanning the last 10 years to today, will not be immune to the LightSquared signal, even with them operating exclusively in the bottom 10 MHz segment,” said JD Equipment, which sells high-precision agriculture equipment (http://xrl.us/bk9ixm). “It is not possible to go back in time and build legacy GPS receivers to work in such a high [radio frequency] environment in which they were never designed to compete."
New York-based TEC Land Surveying said its entire business is threatened if the FCC allows LightSquared to use the lower 10 MHz band. “We rely on high accuracy GPS to stay in business and we use high accuracy GPS every day in a variety of ways,” the company said (http://xrl.us/bk9img). “By allowing Light Squared to interfere with high accuracy GPS, you will negate many millions if not billions spent by municipalities and the federal government to establish high accuracy horizontal and vertical control throughout the country.” Steven Scott, president of Montana’s Scott Land Surveying, said his company uses high-precision GPS on a daily basis (http://xrl.us/bk9it4). “If the quality of satellite GPS signals were to be adversely affected, in any way, by the proposed LightSquared broadband network, the best case would be a much higher cost to our clientele,” Scott contended. “The most likely worst case would be to close this small business entirely."
The University of Georgia Sea Grant College Program said LightSquared’s alternative proposal “will still impact high precision GPS receivers already in use across the coastal community,” in a letter filed at the FCC (http://xrl.us/bk9iku). “Our research and outreach programs depend on GPS to precisely locate long-term research locations, track animals on a continuous basis, and to collect streaming data from moving rovers as only a few examples of GPS use in research.”