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by jws 5240 days ago
I believe their license includes the right to use terrestrial stations to fill in. They are under a conditional waiver not use a satellite at all. They are certainly using spectrum in a way not foreseen, but that is different from forbidden.

The bottom line is that the US has suspiciously high wireless data costs and a duopoly controlling the market. It's either make more players, effectively regulate the existing players, or allow the overpriced drag on consumers to persist.

There are only a quarter million airplanes in the US. Retrofit all of their navigation aids systems and free up a couple hundred MHz of bandwidth and you'd still pay for it with one year's savings from the mobile internet consumers. (And probably have better navigation in the planes.)

1 comments

I believe their license includes the right to use terrestrial stations to fill in. They are under a conditional waiver not use a satellite at all. They are certainly using spectrum in a way not foreseen, but that is different from forbidden.

That's wrong. Only specific bands of wireless are unregulated; the bands at issue here are heavily regulated and are restricted to low-power satellite transmissions. Lightsquared had a conditional use permit to use the spectrum it purchased for alternative purpose but only if it could show that it would not interfere with the use of other low powered satellite transmission spectrums. Light-squared failed to do so.

An example that has been brought up before: its as if Lightsquared bought a house in a residential neighborhood, zoned for residential, and then tried to demand the right to use it as a venue for holding large-scale commercial concerts.