A Bandwidth of Gold

Well, the wireless startup, LightSquared, is back in the news again, and back from the dead apparently. After filing for bankruptcy a year ago following a losing battle against the GPS industry, which successfully lobbied to keep LightSquared from using part of the satellite spectrum, they're now testing the feasibility of sharing the spectrum with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).  According to Maggie Reardon of CNET, the FCC recently gave approval for LightSquared to begin testing the use of 5MHz of spectrum in the 1675-1680 MHz band.

While it appears that our precious GPS satellite spectrum is still safe for the time being, we'll have to see how the shared bandwidth testing, not to mention LightSquared's emergence from bankruptcy, plays out over time, and whether or not they try again at some point to utilize the satellite bandwidth they were originally granted permission to use.

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