Ligado Says DOD Emails Show Schism, Prior NTIA Backing
Ligado's L-band terrestrial wireless plan had the backing of NTIA's technical staff and the DOD Chief Information Office, and NTIA's opposition seemingly was political, said Ligado in a letter Thursday to House and Senate Commerce Committee members. Defense emailed us that the entire DOD is opposed to the Ligado plan. "The Executive Branch’s views are publicly available in the FCC’s docketed proceeding," NTIA said.
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DOD told us it's in the midst of scheduling a briefing for the five FCC commissioners on GPS test data it hasn't made public. It said NTIA's reconsideration petition pending before the FCC (see 2005220055) is on behalf of it and other federal agencies.
Ligado said in the letter its discussions with NTIA indicated its current opposition runs contrary its position "reached and held by engineers and experts ... prior to changes in political personnel there." It said FCC Commissioner Mike O'Rielly said much the same in his Senate Commerce Committee testimony this week (see 2006160062). Former NTIA head David Redl resigned in May 2019 (see 1905090051). O'Rielly's office didn't comment Thursday.
The letter includes an email the company received from an unnamed DOD CIO official congratulating the company on the FCC's approval, and a 2018 email exchange in which the Air Force seems to run into difficulty getting other branches to sign onto its opposition to the Ligado plan. DOD expressed surprise at the FCC's Ligado approval, but "the attached documents make clear that the spectrum experts at DoD CIO and NTIA had long ago concluded that the testing, the science, and the law dictate that result," Ligado General Counsel Valerie Green wrote.
The DOD CIO official told us disagreement among military branches or between branches and headquarters on technical issues is common due to the inherent differences among them and the technologies they use. The department also considers those debates and disputes healthy, he said. But DOD opposition didn't tackle fundamental questions like how Defense can be concerned its GPS receivers could be harmed by Ligado signal interference when commercial GPS receiver markers largely signed off saying their equipment is compatible with the Ligado plan. Nor have there been engineering rebuttals to the Ligado plan, he said.
In the CIO letter, dated April 21, he writes that the agency's "unanimous, bipartisan vote ... is keenly obvious proof ... of the engineering and regulatory soundness of this final determination." He said he repeatedly was targeted by DOD and Air Force top officials for "insisting upon full and fair diligence analyses and reporting about all of the pertinent technical and regulatory data."
In the 2018 exchange, the Air Force said DOD CIO intends to support the Ligado proposal, and that its and DOT's adjacent band compatibility testing found most GPS applications "will not be seriously degraded" by that approach. But the Air Force asked for other branches' support in keeping the 1 dB metric for harmful interference instead of the Ligado-proposed spectrum limit. However, a Navy response said the Air Force position lacks "analytical rigor" and it walked back an Air Force assertion the Navy had preliminarily said it would oppose the Ligado proposal. The Air Force didn't comment.
FCC Chairman Ajit Pai, quoting from the DOD CIO letter, tweeted that the commission put conditions on Ligado to address DOD concerns about 1559-1610 MHz band interference though DOD has "not significantly relied" on that band for years.