Ligado sues the government, claims U.S. military stole its spectrum

Ligado Networks on Friday filed an explosive lawsuit essentially alleging that the U.S. government took $39 billion worth of its spectrum without paying for it.

“High-ranking US government officials have acted deliberately to deprive an American company of its rightfully licensed property,” said Ivan Seidenberg, chairman of Ligado’s board and a former chairman of Verizon, in a release.

Ligado’s lawsuit claims that the US military is secretly using its L-band spectrum holdings – which sit in the 1525-1660.5 MHz range – and that Department of Defense (DoD) officials are therefore working to prevent the company from launching its own 5G operations in that band.

The DoD “has taken Ligado’s spectrum for the agency’s own purposes, operating previously undisclosed systems that use or depend on Ligado’s spectrum without compensating Ligado,” the company wrote in its 69-page lawsuit. The company does not disclose what the DoD might be doing with the spectrum.

According to The Wall Street Journal, federal officials, including those at the DoD, either declined to comment on the lawsuit or cited a policy of not commenting on litigation.

The background and the allegations

Ligado initially launched in 2010 under the name LightSquared. It planned to build a 4G LTE network with its L-band spectrum holdings that it would resell to other companies. However, that plan fell apart after the FCC ruled that the proposed network would interfere with GPS signals.

The company fell into bankruptcy as a result – but Ligado arose from LightSquared’s ashes in 2015 with a plan to build a 5G network using that same L-band spectrum, this time focusing on the Internet of Things (IoT). Importantly, the company managed to score approvals from the FCC for its plan.

But, according to the company’s lawsuit, the DoD embarked on a “misinformation and disparagement campaign” against Ligado starting shortly after the company received its FCC approvals in 2020. That campaign, according to the lawsuit, sought to revive concerns that Ligado’s 5G plans would interfere with GPS services.

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