A cross-industry coalition of manufacturers - including GPS manufacturers - have banded together to form SaveOurGPS.org, and in opposition to a national wireless broadband proposal by LightSquared.

Garmin and Trimble, two GPS companies, have joined. In addition, SaveOurGPS.org includes: the Aeronautical Repair Stations Association, Air Transport Association, Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association, American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials, American Rental Association, Associated Equipment Distributors, Association of Equipment Manufacturers, Case New Holland, Caterpillar Inc., Edison Electric Institute, Esri, General Aviation Manufacturers Association, Deere & Company, National Association of Manufacturers, and OmniSTAR.

Trimble vice president and general counsel Jim Kirkland will testify before the Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice and Science of the House Appropriations Committee on Friday on the issue.

LightSquared owns a satellite communications network but wants to get into the more popular and profitable land-based cellular business. So it asked the FCC for a conditional waiver so it could broadcast much more powerful land-based signals than it's been doing for the past 15 years.

The problem, according to SaveOurGPS.org, is that the land-based communications towers could interfere with GPS. "The signal that emanates from LightSquared towers, our tests show that it ... will degrade your signal to the point where you could not get a fix with GPS," Garmin spokesman Ted Gartner said said in February.

The coalition says that the FCC issued its conditional waiver allowing LightSquared to build its network of towers without appropriate testing. LightSquared, for its part, says it certainly does not wish to interfere with GPS signals.

"We not only have to have a robust wireless broadband network, we have to have a robust GPS network. They both have to work," LightSquared executive vice president Jeff Carlisle, in February.

The coalition said it will make the following recommendations to the House and to the FCC:

"The FCC must make clear, and the NTIA must ensure, that LightSquared's license modification is contingent on the outcome of the mandated study. The study must be comprehensive, objective, and based on correct assumptions about existing GPS uses rather than theoretical possibilities. The views of LightSquared, as an interested party, are entitled to no special weight in this process."

"The FCC should make clear that LightSquared and their investors should not proceed to make any investment in operating facilities prior to a final FCC decision (or at least make it explicit that they do so at their own risk)."

"Further, the FCC's, and NTIA's, finding that 'harmful interference concerns have been resolved' must mean 'resolved to the satisfaction of preexisting GPS providers and users," the coalition said.

"Resolution of interference has to be the obligation of LightSquared, not the extensive GPS user community of millions of citizens.  LightSquared must bear the costs of preventing interference of any kind resulting from operations on LightSquared's frequencies. GPS users or providers should not have to bear any of the consequences of LightSquared's actions."

SaveOurGPS.org also argued that the public should be allowed a 45-day comment period.