International specialists have joined a chorus of voices urging the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to indefinitely delay the launch of commercial service on LightSquared Subsidiary’s 4G/LTE1 wireless broadband network (see “LightSquared on Track”).
The opponents’ position as of mid-2011 was informed by multiple independent research programs that demonstrated harmful interference to global positioning system (GPS) receivers, an unacceptable risk without adequate mitigations. In late January, the FCC had granted the company a waiver of rules, enabling network buildout to proceed on the condition that harmful interference to GPS receivers would be mitigated satisfactorily.
In June, the International Civil Aviation Organization told the FCC that “the potential disruption to aviation use of GPS caused by the LightSquared system would have a far-reaching impact on current an…
