LightSquared’s hiring of Kevin Martin, former FCC chairman under George...
LightSquared’s hiring of Kevin Martin, former FCC chairman under George W. Bush, could raise some issues concerning ethics, a satellite industry analyst said. LightSquared’s CEO Doug Smith and Martin, a Patton Boggs attorney, met with Commissioner Ajit Pai last week…
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Timely, relevant coverage of court proceedings and agency rulings involving tariffs, classification, valuation, origin and antidumping and countervailing duties. Each day, Trade Law Daily subscribers receive a daily headline email, in-depth PDF edition and access to all relevant documents via our trade law source document library and website.
to lobby for the company’s proposal to deploy terrestrial service (CD Aug 31 p8). The company’s effort to build the network has been stalled since the FCC proposed to pull its ancillary terrestrial component authority. As a commissioner, Martin “was one of the people closely involved in getting this off the ground,” said Tim Farrar, an independent analyst. A lot of the rules were finalized during his chairmanship, he said. Martin’s involvement in lobbying for LightSquared could raise issues similar to concerns around Meredith Baker’s departure from the commission last year to work for Comcast (CD May 13/11 p1), he said. “It does raise some of the same sorts of issues about to what degree should you be deciding things which benefit a company very significantly potentially and then going and doing work for that company.” Martin could not be reached for comment late Tuesday.