Image: Federal Communications Commission

Blog Editor’s Note: We are at an interesting place in this very long saga. One that has been going on for nearly 20 years. 

It is a complex and intricate tale. It is a story of conflict. One with virtue and no real villains on any side.

It seems to us that everyone “did their job” and acted in the interests of their constituency.

Head down, staying in their lane, filling their narrow role as they should. And why wouldn’t they? To do otherwise would seem to betray trust and bring about criticism and punishment. 

Yet, at some level in every organization, we always hope there are leaders who are able to sit back and take in the larger picture. To ask “What is in the long term best interest of my organization?”  Or even better, “What is in the long term best interest of the nation?”  

Perhaps that is where we are now. Finally. Hopefully the two sides are talking with, rather than at, each other.

Both owe the other something. The government (yes, the FCC is “the government”) has been stringing Ligado along for years and owes the company fair treatment. Ligado, in turn, owes the nation recognition that, despite the way things “ought to be,” they are as they are. Their disrupting a significant number of GPS and Iridium users is not in anyone’s best interest.

We are hopeful there will be a fair and equitable resolution.

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For those of you who are following this issue, we thought it might be helpful to have some of the recent reference material in one place.

Click on below for each document:

• Analysis of Potential Interference Issues Related to FCC Order 20-48 (National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine 9 Sep 2022) 

• Ligado Networks Statement on Review of FCC 2020 Order by National Academies (9 Sep 2022)

• NTIA Statement on National Academies of Sciences Report (9 Sep 2022)

• Press Release on the NASEM Section 1663 Report (Department of Defense 9 Sep 2022)

• Statement of the National Space-Based Positioning, Navigation, and Timing Executive Committee (9 Sep 2022)

• Inhofe, Reed Release Statement on NAS Study (9 Sep 2022)

• Ligado Letter to FCC Regarding Deployment  (12 Sep 2022)