Complications

But the debate during the past year has been far from straightforward, in part because there is not a defined technical threshold of what constitutes “harmful interference.”

“Unfortunately, the commission’s rules are ambiguous, at best,” said Ed Thomas, a former FCC chief engineer who now serves as a paid consultant for LightSquared.

Thomas said that he believes the latest government tests were unfair, noting that the 1 dB threshold — combined with using power levels that were 32 times more than LightSquared planned — was not realistic, because a 1 dB difference would not prevent a GPS device from operating properly.

RELATED: LightSquared claims GPS tests improper

“[The test] was designed for failure from the beginning,” Thomas said.

In addition, LightSquared officials contend that GPS devices are unlicensed, so they do not deserve protection against licensed spectrum uses, such as the one LightSquared has proposed.

“It’s the spectrum that we’re licensed to,” Carlisle said. “So, the issue here is that, if you have somebody who’s licensed to use their spectrum, and you have an unlicensed user that is effectively squatting on your spectrum, they don’t have rights to protection. That’s a defensible legal right, as far as we’re concerned.”

In fact, if the FCC does not acknowledge the sanctity of licensed spectrum in the LightSquared case, the decision could have negative repercussions throughout the industry, Carlisle said.

“I know that there are legislative proposals out there that are talking about getting tens of billions of dollars [from] auctions, part of which would be used to fund a nationwide public-safety network,” he said. “Nobody’s going to pay that much for spectrum if that’s how cheaply we value license rights in this country.

In response, Kirkland said that the licensed vs. unlicensed argument lacks substance in this case.

“The FCC has clearly said that this service [GPS] is protected from interference,” Kirkland said. “Whether GPS is licensed or unlicensed, it’s an authorized spectrum use. [LightSquared’s argument] is sort of a red herring.”

GPS industry representatives and NTIA supported testing of the interference situation prior to the FCC granting the 2010 conditional waiver, which significantly changed the spectral environment in the band, Kirkland said. But Thomas said that the interference environment approved in the 2005 ATC order essentially was the same as the 2010 waiver, so the FCC should have maintained its rules.

According to Carlisle, the chilling effect of this controversy is that failure by the federal government to provide regulatory certainty could damage or even destroy the willingness of investors to financially support new technological endeavors.

“The thing is, the FCC had worked out this issue a long time ago — how could our service and GPS coexist, based on the information GPS gave to it at the time, which was all about restrictions on our signal,” he said. “[GPS] didn’t say anything about receivers at the time. They waited until we had invested $4 billion.”