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By Daniel Baxter |
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March 14, 2011 - A representative of a founding member
of the Coalition to Save Our GPS told a House
subcommittee on Friday that a recent action by the
Federal Communications Commission (FCC) could cause
"consequences of disruption" to the Global Positioning
Systems (GPS) that will be "far reaching, likely to
affect large portions of the population and the federal
government."
In
testimony prepared for delivery before the Subcommittee
on Commerce, Justice and Science of the House
Appropriations Committee, Trimble Vice President and
General Counsel Jim Kirkland stated that a recent highly
unusual FCC decision to grant a conditional waiver
allowing the dramatic expansion of terrestrial use of
the satellite spectrum immediately neighboring that of
GPS creates a serious risk of severe interference to
millions of GPS receivers. The conditional waiver was
granted to a company called LightSquared. |
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Kirkland testified one day following the launch of the Coalition to Save Our GPS, comprised of representatives of a wide variety of industries and companies who have joined together to resolve this serious threat to GPS. Your can read the full testimony.
He
declared that "LightSquared's proposal to build 40,000
terrestrial base stations operating at 1 billion times the power
levels of GPS signals as received on earth represents a tectonic
change in the use of this band. While the GPS community lauds
efforts to add new broadband competition and free up spectrum
for mobile uses, this must be done in the context of rational,
long term spectrum planning, rather than the rushed, ad hoc
waiver process followed by the FCC to date.
"Spectrum
is a public asset and it should not lightly be handed over at
the behest of a private party. More fundamentally, the laws of
physics cannot be waived by the FCC. This is a serious problem
with no obvious solution." |
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