Ligado Recon Petitions Reiterate Objections; Company Faces Challenges

Meanwhile, the company raised more money. The company told us it's confident of the path ahead. Others said moving forward could be difficult in the industrial IoT sector the firm seeks to serve. The satellite firm could sell spectrum to a major carrier, some speculated.

Recon petition parties and Ligado backers acknowledge the arguments aren't necessarily novel. Some see the petitions as being more about motivating Congress to act, rather than the FCC (see 2005210043). The FCC didn't comment Thursday. An official noted the agency is going through the recon petitions.

The arguments don't need to be novel for the FCC to take note or reverse itself, emailed Iridium CEO Matt Desch. He said the agency's next step is deciding whether it wants to address Ligado order shortcomings. He said those include lack of an economic analysis, misinterpretation of the commission's own rules, "its misinterpretation/misunderstanding, or maybe even ignoring statutory language ... and its brushing aside (without a cogent explanation) of inconvenient facts/submissions."

New information isn't the issue since the challenge in the decision doesn't seem to be one of mission information but of parties "understanding the same information very differently," emailed Resilient Navigation and Timing Foundation President Dana Goward. The petitions "are certainly an important part of due diligence for parties regardless of whether they also intend to seek a remedy through Congress or the courts," he said. The petitions surprisingly didn't address the lack of protection for the uplink band when Ligado's plan is to focus on uplink-only use, said spectrum and satellite consultant Tim Farrar.

Ligado opponents "have had years -- literally, years -- to raise objections and submit studies" but didn't," emailed Technology Policy Institute President Scott Wallsten, a backer of the FCC approval. "Ignoring legitimate process and later steamrolling over everything that already happened because you would prefer not to bother upgrading your own equipment is a terrible precedent." Ligado said Thursday it lined up $100 million in new investments “to begin taking the necessary steps to build 5G IoT networks that serve ... public safety and emergency response, commercial transportation, energy, and manufacturing.”

Work Ahead

The Ligado order concedes some interference will happen, and even if it's a minor amount, the aggregate effect from all the affected civil receivers would be "substantial," said RNT Foundation's recon petition. It said the commission requiring Ligado provide stand-alone terrestrial service effectively reallocated mobile satellite service L-band spectrum to mobile service without an NPRM, an Administrative Procedure Act violation.

The FCC's "limited and dismissive analysis" of the proposed 1 dB harmful interference standard "does not constitute the required 'hard look' at this issue," Lockheed Martin said. It said DOD objections received "short shrift," and the order's cost/benefits analysis "is severely lacking the rigor required of a Commission decision [and is] overly credulous when it comes to the claimed benefits."

Aeronautical interests said the FCC decision relies in part on an FAA analysis that agency acknowledges was somewhat incomplete while relying on "insufficiently narrow" Ligado studies. The aeronautical interests include the Aerospace Industries Association, Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association, Airlines for America, Aviation Spectrum Resources, International Air Transport Association and National Air Transportation Association.

The approval violated FCC Chairman Ajit Pai's policy of releasing drafts of items before votes to allow better feedback, Trimble said. Pai does that when items are voted on at monthly meetings. Issuing the draft would have given an opportunity to point out "basic flaws" in the decision, like the inaccurate characterization of Ligado agreements with GPS equipment manufacturers, Trimble said. The noninterference conditions on Ligado are based on typical FCC models to resolve disputes between "sophisticated" licensees like broadcasters or wireless carriers but "are completely impractical" for issues affecting individual device owners, it said.

Ligado is required to consult the Pentagon, but it's not required to act if it doesn't agree it will produce harmful interference, said Iridium, Flyht Aerospace Solutions and Skytrac Systems. Even if ordered to act, Ligado by law can't provide money to DOD for equipment replacements, the filers said. They said the FCC "inexplicably" used 2005 out-of-band emissions limits that no longer apply without justifying why, while also rejecting Iridium-provided evidence that didn't use the power levels the commission ultimately went with, even though it could have modified the results and seen they still point to harmful interference.

The FCC decision overlooked "certain central findings of fact," such as the key role GPS plays as a public utility, the devastation Ligado's network will have on GPS devices and the lack of effective fixes to that harmful interference issue, the Association of Equipment Manufacturers told Pai aides and an Office of Engineering and Technology engineer, per a docket 12-340 posting Thursday. AEM, the American Road & Transportation Builders Association and American Farm Bureau Federation's recon petition said requiring Ligado compensate federal but not private entities for repair and replacement of GPS devices is unprecedented.