Skip to main content

LightSquared says LTE network interference with GPS solved

LightSquared SkyTerra 1
Image used with permission by copyright holder

For months, concerns have been brewing that LightSquared‘s forthcoming satellite-assisted 4G LTE network would interfere with GPS reception by positioning high-powered transmissions in frequency blocks adjacent to GPS signals—which are notoriously low-powered and subject to interference. Now, the company says it has devised a “comprehensive solution” to the problem, and plans to shift away from a 10MHz frequency block it planned to use to launch its service to another 10 MHz block further away from GPS frequencies, and has reached an agreement with Inmarsat—which controls the lower spectrum block—so it can continue to roll out its business plan on schedule.

“This is a solution which ensures that tens of millions of GPS users won’t be affected by LightSquared’s launch,” said LightSquared chairman and CEO Sanjiv Ahuja, in a statement. “At the same time, this plan offers a clear path for LightSquared to move forward with the launch of a nationwide wireless network that will introduce world class broadband service to rural and underserved areas which still find themselves on the wrong side of the digital divide.”

LightSquared’s deployment shift comes in the wake of concerns from everyone from the U.S. Air Force Space Command to the Department of Homeland Security that LightSquared’s plan to send high-powered transmissions from satellites to as many as 40,000 terrestrial base stations could overwhelm low-power GPS signals on adjacent frequencies. The concerns were not new, and LightSquared worked with the GPS industry and the National Telecommunications and Information Administration to test and approve its use of GPS-adjacent frequencies. However, LightSquared now acknowledges that “early tests” indicated that the frequency block where it planned to launch LTE service posed interference risk for “many” GPS receivers. However, the company’s test results with the new, lower block of frequencies generates almost no interference, with LightSquared claiming only high-precision receivers specifically designed to operate in LightSquared’s spectrum bring impacted.

No financial or other terms of LightSquared’s arrangement with Inmarsat were disclosed.

LightSquared’s LTE network is based on a fundamentally different design than traditional mobile broadband networks being constructed by the likes of Verizon Wireless, AT&T, and Sprint—instead of using fiber and Ethernet backhaul to interconnect towers and transmission points, LightSquared will use satellite transmission to link together base stations, eliminating the need to construct (or lease) expensive ground-based networks. In theory, LightSquared’s network could bring 4G LTE service to rural and outlying areas traditionally passed over by major broadband operators. The company plans to sell service to other wireless operators, rather than bring LTE directly to consumers. Leap Wireless and Best Buy are already onboard as partners.

Geoff Duncan
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Geoff Duncan writes, programs, edits, plays music, and delights in making software misbehave. He's probably the only member…
This AI cloned my voice using just three minutes of audio
acapela group voice cloning ad

There's a scene in Mission Impossible 3 that you might recall. In it, our hero Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) tackles the movie's villain, holds him at gunpoint, and forces him to read a bizarre series of sentences aloud.

"The pleasure of Busby's company is what I most enjoy," he reluctantly reads. "He put a tack on Miss Yancy's chair, and she called him a horrible boy. At the end of the month, he was flinging two kittens across the width of the room ..."

Read more
Digital Trends’ Top Tech of CES 2023 Awards
Best of CES 2023 Awards Our Top Tech from the Show Feature

Let there be no doubt: CES isn’t just alive in 2023; it’s thriving. Take one glance at the taxi gridlock outside the Las Vegas Convention Center and it’s evident that two quiet COVID years didn’t kill the world’s desire for an overcrowded in-person tech extravaganza -- they just built up a ravenous demand.

From VR to AI, eVTOLs and QD-OLED, the acronyms were flying and fresh technologies populated every corner of the show floor, and even the parking lot. So naturally, we poked, prodded, and tried on everything we could. They weren’t all revolutionary. But they didn’t have to be. We’ve watched enough waves of “game-changing” technologies that never quite arrive to know that sometimes it’s the little tweaks that really count.

Read more
Digital Trends’ Tech For Change CES 2023 Awards
Digital Trends CES 2023 Tech For Change Award Winners Feature

CES is more than just a neon-drenched show-and-tell session for the world’s biggest tech manufacturers. More and more, it’s also a place where companies showcase innovations that could truly make the world a better place — and at CES 2023, this type of tech was on full display. We saw everything from accessibility-minded PS5 controllers to pedal-powered smart desks. But of all the amazing innovations on display this year, these three impressed us the most:

Samsung's Relumino Mode
Across the globe, roughly 300 million people suffer from moderate to severe vision loss, and generally speaking, most TVs don’t take that into account. So in an effort to make television more accessible and enjoyable for those millions of people suffering from impaired vision, Samsung is adding a new picture mode to many of its new TVs.
[CES 2023] Relumino Mode: Innovation for every need | Samsung
Relumino Mode, as it’s called, works by adding a bunch of different visual filters to the picture simultaneously. Outlines of people and objects on screen are highlighted, the contrast and brightness of the overall picture are cranked up, and extra sharpness is applied to everything. The resulting video would likely look strange to people with normal vision, but for folks with low vision, it should look clearer and closer to "normal" than it otherwise would.
Excitingly, since Relumino Mode is ultimately just a clever software trick, this technology could theoretically be pushed out via a software update and installed on millions of existing Samsung TVs -- not just new and recently purchased ones.

Read more