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What’s new: An Op-Ed by the Security Industry Association about NextNav’s petition before the FCC.
Why it’s important:
- If the FCC approves the petition, every company that offers PNT services or systems will be put on the back burner by the government and other potential customers for years.
- The FCC has a Notice of Inquiry open asking a lot of questions about PNT systems. Every PNT company should read it and comment.
What else to know:
- The NextNav petition is essentially an unsolicited proposal asking for a sole source acquisition with no guarantee they will perform.
- The value of the spectrum NextNav is asking for so they can sell it is about $5B. Yep, that’s a “B.”
- The Security Industries Association, the Z-Wave Alliance, the tolling industry, and others are objecting to the petition because they already use the spectrum NextNav wants to take over.
- See GEN Shelton’s Op-ed here.
- See our filing with the FCC here,
Flawed spectrum proposal could cause disruption and risks to public safety
We received the following statement from the Security Industry Association and post it here due to its direct relevance to GNSS/PNT. In the first paragraph, the statement uses the words “complement,” “alternative,” and “backup” as if they were interchangeable. However, while “to complement” and “to back up” are synonyms in this context, “to complement / back up” and “alternative” are not. Rather, they refer to very different concepts. That is why the FCC was careful to write: “While we focus in this inquiry on complementary PNT given the predominant use of GPS in the United States, we also seek information regarding alternative PNT technologies and solutions that may better achieve PNT resilience nationwide.”
- Matteo Luccio, Editor-in-Chief
