Ping-pong sueballs: Bankruptcy dogs LightSquared's chances Stricken US mobe network LightSquared is wriggling for survival in Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The idea of Chapter 11 is to provide protection for a company so that it can trade through difficulties and hopefully get back to trading normally. The system was to use a combination of 4G (LTE) and satellite to deliver national high- …
"It remains uncertain whether the FCC will reinstate the licence. Despite the issue of GPS interference, LightSquared is certain that the network is viable, and that the interference issues can be managed. "
But this is the license that says they can transmit signals between satellites and the gound. They have always been free to do this. What they are not free to do is transmit high power ground-ground signals on a band that was specifically set aside only for satellite to ground use to avoid interference with GPS.
Meanwhile they are still finding money to pay to Inmarsat in return for Inmarsat not using their own license, even though Lightsquared is not using it. I can see this going on for a while yet.
Lightsquared and GPS use different frequencies - but they are close to each other. GPS receivers should filter out frequencies not used for GPS, and be immune to Lightsquared's transmissions. In real life, GPS manufacturers used cheap filters that let enough of Lightsquared's signals through to cause confusion.
Lightsquared think this is not their fault, so GPS manufacturers should use better filters and everyone should buy new receivers. The FCC say that Lightsquared's license is dependent on their signals not effecting GPS - even though GPS receivers should use better filters. Lightsquared became a litigation company specialising in suing the FCC.
The real purpose of chapter 11 is to keep the creditors at bay while lawyers transfer the company's remaining assets to each other. This can go horribly wrong if the largest creditors agree to form a committee to run the company in chapter 11.
"Lightsquared and GPS use different frequencies - but they are close to each other. GPS receivers should filter out frequencies not used for GPS, and be immune to Lightsquared's transmissions. In real life, GPS manufacturers used cheap filters that let enough of Lightsquared's signals through to cause confusion."
That's part of the issue, the 2nd part is what BristolBachelor pointed out -- the GPS filtering (even on the cheap ones) works fine if LightSquared intended to use these frequencies licenses for satellite communications to communicate with satellites; but they intended to use the very same frequencies with high-powered ground stations.
Anyway... even before this issue popped up, LightSquared's plans seemed a bit umm... "Up in the air". 2004-era plan was for a primarily satellite system with some ground stations (XM/Sirius also do this... for most people it's 100% satellite, but "urban canyons" like New York City will have a few ground stations due to the skyscrapers causing widespread blockage of any view of the sky to see the satellites.) As far as I know, no satellite has been launched. By 2011 they received a waiver to launch products that did not even support satellite, and intended to use this satellite spectrum strictly via a large (40,000 planned) number of ground stations. That is where they ran into trouble regarding possible GPS interference. But, I think they would have found rolling out *40,000* sites to be quite a bit more expensive than they planned anyway.
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