Senator Uses FCC Nomination Process To Question National Wireless Network

K7DAN contributes this excerpt from the intersection of politics, regulation, and high technology: "Sen. Charles Grassley is standing by his threat to place a hold on two nominees to the Federal Communications Commission over concerns about a controversial new wireless network the agency has allowed to move forward. The Iowa Republican this week accused the FCC of refusing to comply with his requests for information on its discussions with Virginia company LightSquared regarding its next-generation national wireless network. Some fear the network would hinder the effectiveness of high-precision GPS systems — used by the military, farmers and others. Grassley also raised questions about the involvement of Harbinger, the hedge fund behind the project and founded by Democratic donor Philip Falcone."

Process

[necro81]

One thing that so many don't realize about the U.S. Congress, and particularly the Senate, is that so much of the bullshit that goes on has nothing to do with their constitutional duties to craft, debate, and revise legislation, but rather to the skirting and enforcing of procedural rules. I'm not talking about overly-civilized stuff like Robert's Rules of Order that keep everyone from shouting at the same time. These are rules that, for instance, allow a single disgruntled Senator to completely uphold the nomination process - such as this case. Sometimes the Senator has demands for such and such information (which may be valid), but usually it is just a veil for quid pro quo. Most egregious of these procedures is the anonymous hold [wikipedia.org], which allows otherwise qualified candidates to have their nomination in limbo, indefinitely, at the whim of some Senator so craven they won't even dignify their objection in public. The Senate is authorized to advise and consent on executive nominations, not to hide in the corner and pout like children.

Re:Other Motivation?

[gavron]

LighSquared technology IS IN VIOLATION OF CURRENT FCC RULES and requires an exemption.
LightSquared will mess with GPS for airplanes. (I'm a pilot).
LightSquared will mess with GPS for drivers. (I'm a driver)
LightSquared will remove GPS as being a useful technology in North America. (I'm in North America).

It will put North American users in the dark ages.

That alone is reason enough they should not be given said exemption.

It's only being debated because they have powerful backers.

Blow them all the hell up and improve our country.

E

Re:Process

[Attila Dimedici]

I would not mind the anonymous holds if they had a one-time, limited length (let's say someone is nominated and a Senator has heard a rumor about something inappropriate in that nominee's background that would be fairly significant for the post, but is somewhat farfetched. The Senator wants a little time--say 30 days--to find out if there is anything to the allegation before going on record opposing the nominee).

Re:Other Motivation?

[gavron]

LOL. No, the testing was done by lots of people. I'd post a link but I don't want to insult your intelligence by making it a google search. (Yes, there are LOTS of research results.)

LightSquared interferes with most commercially viable GPS receivers.

Could GPS manufacturers have made their products less sensitive (e.g. "WORSE") and be more immune to being totally decimated by this? Sure. The big win is that GPS manufacturers worked to get us good tech. LightSquared has nothing new to offer, but would eliminate GPS in the process.

Sorry, as much as I'm a fan of new technology, GPS trumps Yet Another Wireless Provider Panacea.

Cheers,

E

Re:Other Motivation?

[Charliemopps]

It's not "lost" farming equipment. Farmers and industrial equipment use this tech to do things like level a field to within a 1/4" I watched a large D8 bulldozer that had a blade guided by one of these systems put a grade on a plot that was exactly 1" lower at one end than the other. This was important for the crop being planted there because they wanted very slow runoff without any pooling etc... It was amazing to watch really. If farmers lost systems like this it would have an impact, not only on their yields, but also on the amount of water, fertilizer, seed, even gasoline they'd use. It'd be bad for us all.

Re:Other Motivation?

[PopeRatzo]

This is a pretty textbook example of the Legislative Branch acting as a check on the Executive Branch.

Or, it can be seen as a corrupt Republican lawmaker killing an innovative small business at the behest of his big campaign donors.

Which one makes more sense, that the system is actually working the way it's supposed to, or that someone who has been corrupt in the past being corrupt in the present?

Re:Other Motivation?

[msauve]

"Senator Grassley's problem with the nomination of the new FCC chairman has nothing to do with that."

Unless he's concerned that the FCC is making decisions based on political pressures, and not unbiased technical data and public input.

Many people aren't aware of the criticality of the GPS system. In addition to the well known consumer navigation products, GPS is a critical part of a lot of other businesses. It's used for syncronizing timing across cell phone towers (and lots of other timing uses), the FAA is working on making GPS a more useful/critical component of aviation, modern surveying depends on GPS accuracy, etc. Specific to a Senator from Iowa, farmers use GPS to auto-navigate their implements to plant and harvest crops. And, of course, there's the military use, which is why it was created in the first place.

Lightsquared got an allocation for satellite frequencies, then a fast track allowance for using them terrestrially, in essence getting very cheap spectrum compared to LTE competitors who paid for spectrum which was always intended for terrestrial use.

Now, they're disingenuously claiming that the fault is in the GPS receivers. Radio devices are designed with filters to block adjacent channel interference. But, there is no perfect filter, and costs increase exponentially as you try to get closer to a sharp "brick wall" cutoff. GPS devices were designed with the understanding that adjacent frequencies were for satellite use (which they were at the time), so they were designed with filters to deal with those signal levels. That's not unreasonable. Lightsquared's terrestrial signals can be expected to be +60 dbm stronger (1,000,000 times the power) than a satellite signal.

Note that complaints about this allowance for Lightsquared are widespread [wikipedia.org], and not limited to Republicans.

Re:To add...

[WilCompute]

One problem is that GPS bleeds into the spectrum that LightSqured is supposed to use, due to poor design decisions. The GPS satellites would need to be fixed to prevent usage outside of the range they were supposed to operate in. LightSqured's solution to this is to use half of the bandwidth they were allotted, in order to not interfere with the GPS satellites. They even offered to pay to fix the satellites themselves, in order to solve the problem.