Sept. 29, 2011

We're gratified that Senator Grassley has recognized something that the GPS industry has denied for months. The industry tried to say that there was no technical or engineering fix to the interference problem. They said there was no way to build a filter or to coexist with LightSquared's network. They said it would take ten years and tens of billions of dollars to research and find a solution. The GPS industry has now been proven wrong on every level. In a matter of months, LightSquared and the private marketplace have produced a solution using current technology and materials.  The industry now has turned its focus to what the real issue was for them all along — protecting their pocketbooks.

Since 2003, the GPS industry has been on notice that they had to design and build GPS devices that could coexist with LightSquared's network.  Yet, during those eight years, they have continued to sell GPS devices, including to federal agencies, that were incompatible with LightSquared's network. So we ask: should GPS users, including the federal government, or LightSquared, be forced to bear responsibility for a problem the GPS industry has known about for nearly a decade and is one of its own making?  The GPS industry has received billions of dollars of taxpayer subsidies, while LightSquared is planning to invest billions of dollars of private capital to build its network.  Why then should the GPS manufacturers, who have grown rich on a massive public subsidy for decades, be allowed to shift the cost for a problem they created to someone else?