Expected Ligado Order Gets More Agencies' Pushback Amid Momentum
With the FCC expected to soon circulate a Ligado approval order (see 2004100060), NTIA and various federal agencies are making another push to stop the momentum. The military estimated the funding and time needed to replace military GPS receivers potentially affected by Ligado's L-band plans is in the billions of dollars and decades. Given the general pushback from agencies on every move to open up more spectrum for 5G and the lack of a unified spectrum policy, Chairman Ajit Pai's moving forward here makes sense, said Public Knowledge Senior Vice President Harold Feld.
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President Donald Trump, who essentially delegated that spectrum policy issue to Pai, values bold action and interagency competition, and creating positive headlines for 5G shows strong leadership, Feld said. DOD and NTIA "are a mess of acting heads and acting career folks -- the people the Trump team see as routinely looking out for their own parochial interest at the expense of the President," Feld emailed. It helps that Ligado spectrum doesn't involve a federal spectrum allocation and is completely under FCC purview, Feld said.
NTIA acting Administrator Doug Kinkoph said the FCC "cannot reasonably" say it has resolved harmful interference issues, in a Friday letter posted Monday in docket 11-109. NTIA submitted March 12 and 24 letters from DOD saying it "strongly opposed" approval of Ligado's L-band low-power terrestrial broadband plan because of possible harmful effects on military GPS. They requested an Air Force-prepared supplemental report for NTIA's Interdepartment Radio Advisory Committee be forwarded to the FCC. IRAC told the commission in December it's "unable to recommend" FCC OK (see 1912090011).
The six-page supplemental report, dated Feb. 14, was signed by the Air Force and endorsed by the Army, Navy, Coast Guard, NASA; the Commerce, Justice, Interior, Transportation, Homeland Security and Energy departments; the National Science Foundation and the FAA. They repeated concerns about effects on military GPS, saying it would be impossible for DOD to identify and repair or replace all the affected GPS receivers, given their classification and how they're embedded into DOD training, exercises and operations. The agencies said Ligado's proposal to replace government GPS receivers affected by the network "is a tacit admission that there would be interference."
That supplement offers no new evidence or claims and is based on "unsupported and overblown claims of threats ... [and] irrelevant statutory references" that try to undermine the FCC's rightful role as the last word on commercial spectrum issues, Ligado said in a posting Monday. Air Force claims of interference are based on Ligado using higher power levels than it agreed to employ in 2018, it said. The offer to repair and replace federal devices was "as necessary" and a good-faith offer, though testing shows few if any devices will need replacement, the company said. The Air Force now is seeking protections it specifically told NTIA in 2010 that it wouldn't, Ligado said. NTIA's assertion the FCC "cannot reasonably" come to the interference-resolved conclusion "greatly overstates NTIA’s role in this proceeding and seeks to arrogate to NTIA a role that Congress gave exclusively to the Commission," the company said.