The LightSquared Whine Continues as the Commission suspends their waiver to use the 1.6 GHz band

After a very long and very public battle the Federal Communications Commission finally agreed that the laws of physics indeed could not be repealed, even with Obama's magical powers, and notified LightSquared that their waiver to use the 1.6 GHz spectrum will be suspended indefinitely thus ending LightSquared's plan to build a wholesale terrestrial based LTE network in the 1.6 GHz band. 


The surprise in this announcement is that the Commission actually did the right thing and went against the political pressure of LightSquared.   


But don't think that just because the FCC has ruled that this is the last you will hear from LightSquared.  Within hours of the announcement by the Commission, LightSquared launched their,  "we have been a victim of pure politics" campaign.    


Jeff Carlisle, LightSquared’s executive vice president for regulatory affairs and public policy, wrote on the company’s blog this week that the GPS industry had apparently become “too big to fail,” seeking protection from the federal government for its own mistakes.

“GPS manufacturers have been selling devices that listen into frequencies outside of their assigned spectrum band — namely into LightSquared’s licensed band,” Mr. Carlisle wrote. “The GPS industry has leveraged years of insider relationships and massive lobbying dollars to make sure that they don’t have to fix the problem they created.”

LightSquared's whine continued threatening legal acton and ramping up its lobbying efforts to attempt to gain access to spectrum for their network through a spectrum swap with federal agencies.  

The saga continues but never underestimate the power of having powerful friends (the President of the United States) as an investor in your company trying to make a $20 + billion spectrum play!  

Marc