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Jeff Carlisle, LightSquared's vice president of regulatory affairs and public policy, accused the Global Positioning System (GPS) industry of trying to manufacture a political scandal to discredit his wireless company on Wednesday. "[GPS companies] have completely mischaracterized the political donations [LightSquared investor] Phil Falcone and our CEO [Sanjiv Ahuja] have made," Carlisle said after a House Small Business Committee hearing. When asked whether he believes the GPS industry has pushed negative political stories about LightSquared, Carlisle said, "There's no doubt in my mind. Of course they have. It's not like this stuff just shows up for no reason whatsoever." Republican...

Survey Scene, October 2011 LightSquared’s been in the news quite a bit since my last Survey Scene newsletter a month ago, but very little of it has actual consequence. A lot of the “news” is just noise. LightSquared pumped up its propaganda campaign nationwide to try to build a consensus in their favor and put pressure on the FCC, and is threatening a lawsuit if the FCC doesn’t do what LightSquared wants. No surprises there. However, other things have happened that I think you might be interested in hearing about.

Billionaire Phil Falcone, whose cozy relationship with the Obama Administration was first exposed by NLPC, may face civil fraud charges by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). According to a filing yesterday by Harbinger Group Inc., Falcone and two other directors have received "Wells Notices," meaning that they are under investigation. Falcone is the Chairman, CEO and primary investor in Harbinger Group Inc., a hedge fund. Reportedly, other Harbinger investors include Soros Fund Management. Harbinger owns LightSquared, which has received an unusual waiver from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to deploy a national 4G wireless network. Media reports have...

Philip Falcone’s proposed LightSquared Inc. wireless service caused interference to 75 percent of global-positioning system receivers examined in a U.S. government test, according to a draft summary of results. The results from testing conducted Oct. 31 to Nov. 4 show that “millions of fielded GPS units are not compatible” with the planned nationwide wholesale service, according to the draft seen by Bloomberg News. “LightSquared signals caused harmful interference to majority of GPS receivers tested,” according to the draft prepared for a meeting next week of U.S. officials reviewing the LightSquared proposal. “No additional testing is required to confirm harmful interference...

Top government officials said Friday that there are "no practical solutions" to GPS interference problems caused by LightSquared's planned mobile broadband network, signaling that the venture-backed company may have to abandon its plans to deploy LTE service in spectrum near to GPS bands. "There appear to be no practical solutions or mitigations that would permit the LightSquared broadband service, as proposed, to operate in the next few months or year without significantly interfering with GPS," Defense Department Deputy Secretary Ashton Carter and Transportation Department Deputy Secretary John Porcari said in a letter to NTIA Administrator Lawrence Strickling. "As a result,...

US regulators sued hedge fund billionaire Philip Falcone for fraud Wednesday, accusing him of taking $113 million from a fund to pay his taxes. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) said Falcone, who raked in billions betting against packaged mortgage securities ahead of the US real-estate crash, took clients' money from funds run by his Harbinger Capital Partners to pay his personal taxes.It also said Falcone illegally manipulated bond prices, traded preferential treatment to investors who backed a controversial board initiative, and broke restricted period trading rules in three initial public offerings to make money on short sales.

LightSquared made it clear on Friday that it's not going down without a fight. The FCC's decision to stop it from launching its wireless network violated its constitutional rights, it said, vowing to find a way to move forward. "I want to make one thing clear: We are not going away," LightSquared regulatory affairs executive Jeff Carlisle said during a call with reporters. "We know there's too much at stake here to just walk away." After LightSquared was unable to fix major problems with GPS interference, the FCC decided last month to void LightSquared's waiver for its wholesale terrestrial-satellite LTE...

Wireless start-up LightSquared plans to fight the Federal Communications Commission's (FCC) move to reject its proposed nationwide 4G network, a company official told The Hill. Jeff Carlisle, LightSquared's vice president for regulatory affairs, said the company will file a formal comment with the FCC urging the agency not to follow through on its proposal to "indefinitely suspend" LightSquared's authority to operate cell towers. The FCC announced the decision Tuesday night after the president's top adviser on telecom issues concluded there is "no practical way" to prevent LightSquared's network from disrupting GPS devices, including those used in flight safety. When...

National Journal calls it "a colossal fall from grace", but it comes only as a political surprise that the FCC acted yesterday to kill off the LightSquared proposal. After an extraordinary one-year grace period to resolve the interference issues of its network with existing GPS systems, the FCC reluctantly admitted that “no practical way” to fix the basic problem of high-powered terrestrial broadcasts on a spectrum slice intended for low-power satellite communications (via Instapundit): The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) moved to reject LightSquared’s planned wireless network on Tuesday after the president’s top adviser on telecom issues said there is “no...

In a major victory for the National Legal and Policy Center, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) yesterday reversed itself and revoked a controversial waiver it had granted LightSquared, which would have allowed the company to deploy a national wireless network. The reversal is not only a major setback for LightSquared's billionaire owner Phil Falcone, but puts a harsh spotlight on the role of FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski. According to Cecelia Kang of the Washington Post Tech blog : The FCC's decision is expected to all but end LightSquared's aspirations to provide mobile broadband services via satellite airwaves -- a...

Barack Obama was a guest at the 1991 wedding of ABC senior foreign correspondent and vice presidential debate moderator Martha Raddatz, The Daily Caller has learned. Obama and groom Julius Genachowski, whom Obama would later tap to head the Federal Communications Commission, were Harvard Law School classmates at the time and members of the Harvard Law Review. After TheDC made preliminary inquiries Monday to confirm Obama’s attendance at the wedding, ABC leaked a pre-emptive statement to liberal-leaning news outlets including Politico and The Daily Beast Tuesday, revealing what may have been internal network pressure felt just days before Raddatz was...

The moderator of the lone October vice presidential debate was previously married to a top Obama official, an association both ABC News and the left-leaning Commission on Presidential Debates do not view as a conflict of interest. ABC Senior Foreign Correspondent Martha Raddatz, whose role as moderator was announced on August 13, was previously married to Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski — an Obama appointee. Genachowki and Raddatz were married in 1991, the same year he graduated from Harvard Law School. Their marriage ended in 1997; the two have a son together. Raddatz does not report on the FCC...

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Last week, Air Force General William Shelton, Commander of Air Force Space Command, told Congressional leaders in a closed-door session that the White House tried to pressure him to change his testimony to favor a company that turns out to be a major donor to the Democratic Party. LightSquared, a Virginia-based broadband satellite company, has been vying for permission to operate in a frequency band in the vicinity of our nation’s GPS system. In Gen Shelton’s presentation to Congress, he went prepared to warn of the dangers the LightSqaured project would pose to our GPS integrity. He said the White...

When it rains, it pours. And there ain’t a big enough umbrella for all President Obama’s cronies and fixers to crowd under these days. While the Solyndra BGB (big green boondoggle) continues to blow up on Capitol Hill, the White House faces another pay-for-play backlash — this time from his own left flank. The liberal Daily Beast reports on a broadband project backed by a frequent Obama White House visitor and donor that has Pentagon officials concerned over potential military GPS interference. The Obama FCC took the lead in intervening on the donor, billionaire hedge fund manster Philip Falcone’s, behalf...

INTERNET GRABBERS House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa continues to demand answers from Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski over why the head of a supposedly independent federal agency visited the White House 81 times between January 2009 and November 2010. It was during this time that Genachowski and his staff were developing a regulatory scheme that would ultimately place control of the Internet in the hands of the FCC. Of special interest to Issa is a meeting held September 17, 2009, which took place four days before Genachowski made a speech at the Brookings Institute laying out the broad...

Despite what you may have heard, yesterday’s net neutrality vote at the FCC wasn’t the result of millions of Americans or even tens of thousands of Americans waking up and saying, “I think I am going to suddenly care about this!” No, like most Washington success stories, yesterday’s enslavement of the Internet was made possible by a small group of people with a lot of money. “After McCain-Feingold passed, several of the foundations involved in the effort began shifting their attention to “media reform”—a movement to impose government controls on Internet companies somewhat related to the long-defunct “Fairness Doctrine” that...

The Obama administration continues its relentless march toward a fully regulated and controlled economy, slowly but inexorably erasing the freedoms Americans have long held, piece by piece. The latest assault on our freedom comes in the form of internet regulations approved by the Federal Communications Commission, designed, they claim, to ensure “net neutrality.” “As we stand here now, the freedom and openness of the Internet are unprotected ... That will change once we vote to approve this strong and balanced order.” So intoned FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, posturing like a gallant knight riding to the defense of a fair maiden...

"For the first time, we'll have enforceable rules of the road to preserve Internet freedom and openness," FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski said Tuesday morning. He said the rules offered "a strong and sensible framework—one that protects Internet freedom and openness and promotes robust innovation and investment." Republicans at the FCC and on Capitol Hill blasted the FCC's new rules, saying that they could stifle new investments in broadband networks and are unnecessary since there have been few complaints about Internet providers blocking or slowing web traffic. The FCC's action "is not motivated by a tangible competitive harm or market failure,"...

The Federal Communications Commission today moved in to regulate the Internet, which is the wonder of the modern age exactly because the FCC hasn’t been able to get its hands around its throat. Don’t just take it from me and others at The Heartland Institute. Some guy named Steve Wozniak wrote in The Atlantic that the little tech company he helped found would have never fundamentally transformed our economy and our lives if the rules the FCC just imposed were in place years ago. I believe this is the end of the Internet as we know it. If the...