LightSquared And Broadbands Future
The Virginia based broadband startup LightSquared has experienced highs and lows on their road to revolutionizing the wireless industry. In two rulings, the FCC gave its blessing to Phil Falcone for the purchase of the company LightSquared on March 26, 2010, and for a waiver of FCC rules on Jan. 26, 2011.
Since that time some powerful voices in Washington have expressed alarm, including the Pentagon and one-third of the U.S. Senate. Their detractors claim that the $14 billion plan suggested by LightSquared could cripple GPS systems, systems which are currently used by military, emergency response, high tech farming and millions of Americans daily in their private devices.
LightSquared has insisted that they have found a way for their technology to co-exist with the current GPS systems. But as lawmakers and technology experts wrestle over the conflicting claims, some in Congress suspect the FCC of favoritism in its haste to decide the matter.
LightSquared’s ties to President Obama’s supporters and the administration’s policy interests run deep, several major Democratic campaign contributors and longtime Obama supporters have held investments in the company and its affiliates during its decade of existence.
A brief list includes Donald Gips, former White House personal chief who maintained an interest worth as much as $500,000, as the FCC was weighing LightSquared’s request. President Obama himself was an early investor in the company when it was known as SkyTerra during his time as a freshman Senator and leading up to his bid for the White House. Jeffrey J. Carlisle, the company’s vice president for regulatory affairs, served with Genachowski (Chaiman of the FCC) and Gips on Obama’s transition team.
Ties like these are not rare in Washington and left on their own they would not indicate any wrong doing on the part of the administration or the part of LightSquared. But during the past week the news that a four-star Air Force general told Congress that Obama administration officials had pressured him to change his testimony about LightSquared seems to indicate that LightSquared could, at the very least, be getting preferential treatment.
A statement from the White House spokesman Eric Schultz in July indicates that the White house is behind the decision of the FCC to allow LightSquared the waiver they received when releasing this statement, ” The Federal Communications Commission is an independent agency with its own standards and procedures for considering these types of decisions and we respect their process”.
Related posts:
- GPS Industry Versus LightSquared Technology
- Free Broadband In The Future?
- White Spaces and the Future of Broadband
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