Opinion: GPS is endangered by a misguided FCC decision made during the Trump administration – Washington Post

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April 14, 2021

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Blog

Written by Editor

No GPS.1

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Blog Editor’s Note: Very good Op-Ed by Ms Diana Furchtgott-Roth who, we are proud to say, is an RNT Foundation member.

Opinion: GPS is endangered by a misguided FCC decision made during the Trump administration

Opinion by Diana Furchtgott-Roth

April 14, 2021 at 8:57 a.m. EDT

Diana Furchtgott-Roth, former deputy assistant secretary for research and development at the Transportation Department, is an adjunct professor of economics at George Washington University.

President Biden has proposed spending $2 trillion on infrastructure, including roads and bridges, climate change research, renewable energy, and electric vehicles and charging stations. All require reliable availability of the Global Positioning System, a constellation of 24 satellites whose signals enable drivers to find their way and emergency workers to get to accidents. Navigation systems in millions of cars depend on GPS.

But now the entire GPS system is endangered by a misguided decision the Federal Communications Commission made during the Trump administration. GPS is vulnerable to interference from ground-based transmissions, yet last April the FCC unanimously granted an application by Ligado Networks, based in Reston, Va., to offer a ground-based 5G service in spectrum, much of which is next to spectrum allocated for GPS.

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