LightSquared Offers to Pay to Retrofit Government GPS Devices

LightSquared has offered to spend "tens of millions" of dollars to retrofit certain government GPS devices with a proprietary component, in hopes of convincing the government to approve a billion-dollar plan to launch an independent 4G LTE network.

The solution, announced Wednesday, is a high-precision receiver that is supposed to drown out interferences caused by LightSquared's proposed LTE network, which runs adjacent to GPS spectrum.

Javad GNSS, a U.S. GPS maker, manufactured the high precision receivers and said it will have 25 pre-production units ready by mid-October, in time for testing being conducted by the Commerce Department and the Federal Communications Commission. The FCC is also evaluating a revised proposal from LightSquared to use the lower 10MHz part of its L-Band spectrum, which it claims will show fewer interferences with GPS receivers.

Each receiver will cost between $ 50-$ 300, depending on device and specs, the company said.

"LightSquared is in active conversations with the government about covering the cost in whatever way we can legally, of retrofitting all the federal government GPS precision devices," said Terry Neal, a spokesman for LightSquared, in a call this afternoon with reporters. "We don't know how many devices there are, and we're not sure if anyone does because it's classified, but we think it's somewhere in the tens of thousands devices."

"The reason why we focused on government devices is because we don't want the tax payer to take a hit," he said, when a reporter asked whether or not the company would pay for private GPS devices.

Neal said today's announcement undercuts its detractors' two biggest arguments against LightSquared: time and money. For the past year, voices from NASA, the Department of Justice, and virtually the entire GPS industry, known as the Coalition To Save GPS, have argued that LightSquared's proposal will cripple GPS systems and threaten national security.

In response to LightSquared's announcement, the Coalition to Save GPS said, "LightSquared has, as usual, oversimplified and greatly overstated the significance of the claims of a single vendor to have 'solved' the interference issue. There have been many vendor claims that have not proven out in rigorous tests and the demanding tests of marketplace acceptance. Moreover, this is not a one-size-fits-all situation and a few prototypes does not a solution make."

"The estimated 750,000 to 1 million high-precision GPS receivers now in use in the United States vary widely: there are hundreds of different high-precision devices used in performing thousands of different tasks. High-precision GPS supports a wide variety of uses, including agriculture, construction, aviation, surveying and many scientific and safety-of-life applications."

Last fall, the Virginia based satellite company invested at least $ 4 billion to use its satellite airwaves to operate a much more lucrative, wholesale cell phone network. Instead of selling directly to consumers, LightSquared's customers would be small retail carriers without Verizon and AT&T's resources, enabling them to build an LTE network.

For more background on LightSquared, see Republicans Accuse LightSquared (and FCC) of Milking Political Connections. Also check out GPS Navigation Is at a Crossroads.

For more from Sara, follow her on Twitter @sarapyin.