LightSquared finds a friend in "Fox News"
Posted: Fri Mar 16, 2012 7:40 pm
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2012/03/ ... htsquared/
The editors of Fox News must hate Obama so much that they are willing to even overlook when something violates the laws of physics just to say Obama is somehow evil. (I also find it amusing how it is "Team Obama"... How come I never heard of "Team Bush"? Oh, right, because they called that "The Bush Administration".)
The Bush era FCC gave LightSquared a conditional use license for some spectrum in the satellite L band directly adjacent to the GPS frequency. The condition that had to be met for approval was that their signal wouldn't interfere with GPS and they have time and time again failed to meet this condition, so the FCC finally denied the license just as they should have.
Given that LightSquared and GPS were adjacent frequencies and the sheer difference in magnitude of power between the two signals, preventing interference was physically impossible. The GPS signal is the light from a single candle burning in the wind and sitting right next to it would be LightSquared's 25000 watt stadium lighting array. The condition that had to be met in order to get the license was a dammed impossible thing, the whole venture was a complete waste of time and even LightSquared's own engineers knew it. Only the LightSquared leadership wanted to push on, probably because they were hoping for a spectrum swap for more valuable spectrum outside of the satellite bands (or they were complete morons).
The loss of LightSquared is a painful blow to consumers because it would have opened up some desperately needed competition in the mobile telecom market, but blaming it on the Obama Administration is ridiculous. If they had gone ahead with it and suddenly everyone's GPS units quit working or worse if commercial airliners started crashing because of it, then who would fox news blame?
The editors of Fox News must hate Obama so much that they are willing to even overlook when something violates the laws of physics just to say Obama is somehow evil. (I also find it amusing how it is "Team Obama"... How come I never heard of "Team Bush"? Oh, right, because they called that "The Bush Administration".)
The Bush era FCC gave LightSquared a conditional use license for some spectrum in the satellite L band directly adjacent to the GPS frequency. The condition that had to be met for approval was that their signal wouldn't interfere with GPS and they have time and time again failed to meet this condition, so the FCC finally denied the license just as they should have.
Given that LightSquared and GPS were adjacent frequencies and the sheer difference in magnitude of power between the two signals, preventing interference was physically impossible. The GPS signal is the light from a single candle burning in the wind and sitting right next to it would be LightSquared's 25000 watt stadium lighting array. The condition that had to be met in order to get the license was a dammed impossible thing, the whole venture was a complete waste of time and even LightSquared's own engineers knew it. Only the LightSquared leadership wanted to push on, probably because they were hoping for a spectrum swap for more valuable spectrum outside of the satellite bands (or they were complete morons).
The loss of LightSquared is a painful blow to consumers because it would have opened up some desperately needed competition in the mobile telecom market, but blaming it on the Obama Administration is ridiculous. If they had gone ahead with it and suddenly everyone's GPS units quit working or worse if commercial airliners started crashing because of it, then who would fox news blame?
