Blogs

There's a good piece in the Economist about how a FCC screwup allocated frequencies to a wireless Internet firm that are adjacent to the GPS frequencies. Now the firm wants to roll out its network, and if the FCC lets it go ahead, we're going to all have to start soldering filters on our GPS modules if we want them to keep working. (I hope wise minds will intervene and ensure that this doesn't come to pass, but it's hard to have confidence in the political system at the moment).

Here's the root of the problem:

The ultimate source of the trouble is a decision made in 2003 by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to grant special dispensation to a broadband satellite operator called SkyTerra, allowing it to fill gaps in its coverage by means of ground-based transmitters. SkyTerra’s chunk of spectrum (1,525-1,559 megahertz) abutted a crucial frequency (1,575 megahertz) used by GPS satellites. However, SkyTerra’s signals being mere whispers from space and its few proposed ground stations designed to operate at low power, any threat to GPS was dismissed as highly unlikely. 

Everything changed when Harbinger Capital Partners, a New York-based investment firm founded by subprime-mortgage billionaire Philip Falcone, bought SkyTerra in 2010 and renamed it LightSquared. For Mr Falcone, the attraction was three-fold: SkyTerra’s swathe of under-used frequencies; its licence to provide a nation-wide internet service; and, above all, the FCC’s waiver allowing it to use ground-based transmitters where satellite reception was poor. 

Mr Falcone quickly persuaded the FCC to rewrite the former SkyTerra licence. Instead of being conditional on offering an internet service primarily by satellite, with ground stations filling in only where satellite coverage was inadequate, the revised licence accepts that the network will rely almost exclusively on terrestrial transmitters.

And not just low-powered ones for serving inner cities. The company intends to build a broadband wireless network comprising 40,000 base-stations across the United States. These stations will put out 15,000 watts apiece. Typical mobile-phone transmitters in urban areas radiate between five and ten watts. Even the 100-foot towers used in open countryside transmit no more than 60 watts.