LightSquared Threatens To Sue
Clearly impatient with the way the company’s plan for its 4G broadband network is becoming further delayed by opposition from the GPS user community

Clearly impatient with the way the company’s plan for its 4G broadband network is becoming further delayed by opposition from the GPS user community, several federal government departments, members of Congress and the FCC bureaucracy itself, a LightSquared official threatened a legal counter offensive during a conference call to reporters. “If it is impossible to get a decision on this that allows us to go forward, I think our way forward is pretty clear, that we then have to insist on our legal rights,” stated Jeffrey Carlisle, LightSquared’s vice president of regulatory affairs and public policy. “If you have to be the bad guy, and go out and start...insisting on your property line, well, then that’s what we’ll do.” But the question is: who would LightSquared sue, and for what? It can hardly sue the FCC, a government body that appears not to have broken any of its rules to LightSquared’s disadvantage. Quite the contrary–GPS industry and users claim that the FCC has bent its own rules in some of its decisions, allegedly at LightSquared’s request. However, the FCC has so far not changed its position that it will not grant operational approval to LightSquared until such operations have been demonstrated not to interfere with GPS.