Ligado Networks informed the FCC this week that it’s not going to move forward with a trial deployment of its L-band spectrum in northern Virginia.
“Ligado has reached this decision to allow time for the company’s discussions with the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, acting in its statutory role on behalf of the Executive Branch, to resolve in a fair and reasonable manner issues relating to the government’s ongoing use of Ligado’s terrestrial spectrum,” wrote Ligado attorney Gerard Waldron of Covington & Burling LLP in a September 12 letter to the FCC.
The move, previously reported by Light Reading, came after Ligado in March revealed plans to conduct operations in the 1526–1536 MHz band on or after September 30, 2022. The company at that time said it was giving the GPS community the requisite six months’ notice as mandated by the FCC. The company included a map showing where it planned to do the trial in northern Virginia.
That came after the FCC authorized Ligado to move forward with the deployment of a low-power terrestrial nationwide radio network in 2020. However, members of the GPS community and U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) questioned the underlying assumptions in the FCC order. That led to Congress requesting a study by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine (NASEM), which was published last week.
Mixed signals
The problem is, the report resulted in some conflicting conclusions. On the one hand, it said tests showed most commercially produced general navigation, timing, cellular or certified aviation GPS receivers will not experience significant harmful interference from Ligado emissions as authorized by the FCC.
However, the report summary also said some high-precision receivers, used for applications such as farming, geodesy and surveying and sold before around 2012, can be vulnerable to significant harmful interference. In addition, it said certain mobile satellite services provided by Iridium Communications and used by the DoD and others will experience harmful interference under certain conditions.
In a statement that came out after the NAS report was released on Friday, Ligado said the report confirmed what the FCC found two years ago: that its operations can coexist with GPS. It also expressed a desire for the DoD and NTIA to stop blocking its license authority and focus instead on working with Ligado to resolve potential impacts related to all DoD systems, including but not limited to GPS.
In contrast, the DoD released a statement saying the NASEM study confirmed that Ligado’s system will interfere with DoD GPS receivers. The GPS Innovation Alliance (GPSIA) also issued a statement applauding NASEM’s reaffirmation that Ligado’s terrestrial operations would have a harmful impact on GPS, satellite and weather forecasting services.
In its March correspondence with the FCC, Ligado said it had worked diligently to satisfy the deployment and notice requirements set forth by the FCC. It also said it reached out both formally and informally to federal agencies to obtain information on their GPS devices but didn’t receive information back about a single device that the government believed would need to be repaired or replaced due to Ligado’s proposed operations.
In recent times, Ligado has talked about using its spectrum for a 5G IoT network. But during its lengthy decade or so review process, speculation often centered on Ligado selling its spectrum rights to the highest bidder, and Verizon was usually cited as a potential acquirer.
Verizon SVP for Technology Strategy and Planning Adam Koeppe previously said it’s not interested in the spectrum and reiterated that stance when asked about it again on Wednesday. “They’ve had an asset that the industry has been aware of for quite some time now and nobody has shown any interest in acquiring it,” he told Fierce.