When it rains for LightSquared, it pours for LightSquared. The ambitious, proposed wholesaler of LTE service – designed to ultimately give consumers additional options for tapping into high-speed mobile Internet – has come under a great deal of fire for the alleged interference that its network creates for common GPS devices. And the results of a new government test certainly don't help LightSquared make its case.
According to the news service Bloomberg, leaked draft results of government tests indicate that the base stations for LightSquared's proposed 4G LTE network created "harmful interference" for 75 percent of the 92 GPS devices used within the test -- up to 109 yards away from the base station, we note. And the overall conclusion? The analysis reports that that "millions of GPS units are not compatible" with LightSquared's network.
"LightSquared signals caused harmful interference to majority of GPS receivers tested," reads the draft. "No additional testing is required to confirm harmful interference exists."
According to LightSquared, the tests – called for by the National Telecommunications & Information Administration and featuring the assistance of the Department of Defense and the Federal Aviation Administration – did not correctly take into account LightSquared's proposed treatment of its base stations in a real-world environment. LightSquared claims that it would run its base stations at a far lower power level than those used during the tests and that the tests themselves used a threshold for "interference" that was a lot more conservative than the level that would otherwise affect devices in a real-world environment.
"If we're affecting the performance of the device -- my goodness, we'd like to be sure that doesn't happen," said Martin Harriman, LightSquared executive vice president, in an interview with Bloomberg.
The full results of the testing are expected to be presented to the Commerce Department on December 14, and the FCC itself is expected to decide next year as to whether LightSquared will actually be able to fire up the network it's spent roughly $14 billion to create.
In the meantime, LightSquared is none too happy about the leaked results of the most recent batch of government tests.
"We are outraged by the illegal leak of incomplete government data to news organizations. This breach attempts to draw an inaccurate conclusion to negatively influence the future of LightSquared and narrowly serve the business interests of the GPS industry," said Harriman in a statement.
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