Lightsquared was going to provide wholesale 4G LTE service for companies not big enough like AT&T and Verizon to deploy their own LTE.

Sprint, Leap, even retailers like Best Buy, signed up with Lightsquared to buy and resell their LTE service.

Lightsquared purchased a band of spectrum from the US government. However after some testing, it was discovered that cheap GPS systems on a neighboring spectrum would receive interference from Lightsquared's service. Many of the GPS systems in order to keep costs down and since they had no spectrum neighbors before, didn't include any type of filters, so would receive signals from a wider spectrum than they should.

Lightsquared, the GPS industries, and government have been trying to resolve the issue. But now the government is saying there is no practical solution to the problem and will not test the issue any further.

http://www.androidcentral.com/feds-just-say-no-lightsquareds-lte-network-say-it-will-never-work-gps

Not sure how badly this hurts Sprint's LTE plans. They have already started rolling out their own LTE network in some areas. And I just read an interesting article that Sprint will be doing some tweaks with it's existing towers to significantly improve their range (can't find the link now) which also included switching them over from older frequencies to LTE. So they are moving on, but they sure aren't catching any breaks when it comes to 4G rollout.

They knew it would cause problems and insisted they could work through it and failed. They can blame GPS makers all they want, but they knew what they were getting into. They cannot just pawn it off to everyone else to fix the mess everyone told them they were getting into. Cannot really tell people to go out and buy however hundred million new gps units (phones, car nav, whatever) as a solution for resolving ~99% of interference.

That said, it would of been nice to have the competition. It would of been a win for the consumer in all likely-hood. It's a shame really.

 

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Yes it is the GPS manufacturer fault and no one elses. This isn't the first time something like this has happened.
You manufacture your product so that it only receives signals from the wavelength your given period. Leaving filters out for more profit isn't an excuse. F--- the GPS manufacturers, they should be forced to fix or replace any GPS unit effected.

They said they could get it to work without changes what is currently out there. That was a lie and I have no sympathy for them. If they tried to make it a law/FCC guideline/whatever or requirement for all new GPS when they first started, and worked with GPS and FCC from get go. They could of probably rolled out a full system not right now, but had game plan for few years down the road.

Wasn't there talk of retiring GPS anyways for a new secure GPS system?

 

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Sounds like Lightsquared has been working with the GPS industry for years on the issue and even tried to use only a part of their spectrum that was furthest way from GPS. I get the general impression they had been working pretty hard to resolve this. Lightsquared of course says the issue is almost nonexistant and GPS says it's widespread. Either way, seems to be about dead in it's current form.


Oh, and I stumbled upon that link about Sprint's LTE roll out and changes they are doing with their towers. Looks pretty cool. Hope it works out for them. T-Mobile is probably going to die and with all the missteps Sprint has been making lately, I worry about a duopoly. So don't screw this up Sprint.
http://www.androidpolice.com/2012/01/13/sprints-1900mhz-network-vision-is-nice-but-the-800mhz-rollout-will-drop-your-jaw/

None of that matters at all. A company buys/given a range of frequencies, make sure your product works only on those frequencies and filters other. The fact that no one is currently using the bands next to you doesn't mean it will be empty forever. GPS makers took the easiest path to profit- F-em

They should go ahead and roll it out and let the class actions fly against the GPS makers

Bad news is the government also uses a lot of GPS and won't let them.

Good news is, if they do it anyway, the government's missiles and bombers may not be able to find their headquarters to destroy them.

Sprint. Â lol.I thought WiMax was supposed to be awesome.Guess not so much.

 

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