Clarification of the historical context surrounding LightSquared’s authorization and proposal to...

Trimble Navigation. Clarification is particularly necessary “in light of recent congressional testimony by members of the FCC’s staff,” GPS company Trimble said in a letter in docket 11-109. Commission staff were witnesses at a House Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations hearing last month on the commission’s decision to revoke its approval of the network (CD Sept 24 p4). The FCC witnesses suggested that the commission has historically looked to the private GPS industry to raise interference issues, Trimble said. This “grossly understates the long-standing role of the FCC, in coordination with NTIA and other government agencies, in regulating and managing the GPS spectrum,” it said. The FCC witnesses didn’t acknowledge that LightSquared’s predecessors proposed strictly limited terrestrial operations to “fill in gaps in a nationwide satellite service footprint where such limited terrestrial operations would be fully integrated with and in support of the primary satellite service,” Trimble said. The witnesses also did not acknowledge that the FCC imposed a series of stringent interference restrictions on these limited terrestrial operations “that directly and indirectly protected GPS from interference of any kind,” Trimble added.