[theBuckwheat]

“Shelton warned that LightSquared could cripple the Pentagon’s Global Positioning System (GPS)”

Since it is unlikely that the Pentagon will need to wage war over the US, where LightSquared was going to be providing its service, this is not quite the threat the press is making of it. However, the real problem was for all aviation users of GPS services. Some, but not all, GPS receivers were degraded and in some cases unusable when tested with a LightSquared transmitter in use.

So, clearly LightSquared made some technical assumptions about its selection of system frequencies that did not take the user environment into account. You don’t want to be on an airliner approaching an airport in fog, and have to worry that the GPS signal being used for the precision approach has been degraded.

This is not an issue that can be cleared up with an ideological solution. LightSquared needs to find a different frequency plan. Period.

[Eric in the Ozarks]

LightSquared has reached the foot stamping stage in their campaign.
To hell with them.

[HiTech RedNeck]

Ah, Buckwheat, I’m betting that if it was that easy for them, they would have switched frequency plans years ago rather than butting heads with GPS.

[USNBandit]

This is at the same time that aviation is rapidly expanding the use of GPS based approaches. The WAAS enabled approaches are an exceptional capability and a huge leap forward for those flying into airports that didn't have precision approaches before.

Now that is in jeopardy because somebody wants more bandwidth on their smart phone?