A number of supporters of the FCC's Ligado decision have warned Congress not to try to use the appropriations process--via language in the FY2021 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA)--to undo that decision at the behest of the Defense Department, saying it would be tantamount to sabotaging the FCC's spectrum authority. 

Related: FCC Proposes Approving Ligado Application

The FCC has already unanimously granted the Ligado proposal (formerly LightSquared) to use satellite spectrum adjacent to GPS spectrum for terrestrial broadband so long as it meets various conditions to prevent interference with that adjacent GPS, but that hasn't stopped critics on the Hill and in the Trump Administration from slamming the decision and trying to reverse it.  

Related: Senate Commerce Hosts Rousing Ligado Debate 

In a letter to congressional leaders, Public Knowledge, INCOMPAS, the Open Technology Institute and others pointed to efforts by the Department of Defense, which said Ligado would cause interference to critical systems like missile guidance, to block the decision. 

"As we write, there are intense efforts underway to do exactly that, via current language in the House and Senate versions of the FY2021 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that ultimately seek to reverse the FCC’s recent bipartisan and unanimous approval of Ligado Networks’ regulatory plans," they wrote.  

Related: FCC Faces Slew of Ligado-Slamming Petitions

They argued that would give DOD a veto of commercial spectrum authorizations. "While we respect the role of the Armed Service Committees to provide legislative oversight of the nation’s military, by rule of law, commercial spectrum decisions remain the sole authority of the FCC. Congress should not attempt to sabotage that authority..." 

Also signing on to the letter were the California Center for Rural Policy, Center for Rural Strategies, Lincoln Network, Media Alliance, Taxpayers Protection Alliance and Wireless Infrastructure Association. 

Ligado Networks said NTIA has not made its case against the company's proposed new broadband service. 

That came in its opposition to the Trump Administration's request that the FCC stay (and reconsider) its order to allow Ligado to launch a terrestrial broadband service adjacent to GPS spectrum. 

The National Telecommunications & Information Administration, the White House's chief communications policy advisor, is concerned that Ligado will interfere with GPS navigation, missile guidance and more, and petitioned the FCC to stay its order. 

The FCC voted unanimously to allow Ligado to proceed, conditioned on power limits, a "kill switch" if interference resulted, based on FCC engineering assessments FCC chair Ajit Pai said made the item good to go.  

But NTIA said that was hardly the case: Based on what it said were the FCC's "unworkable conditions while still uncertain whether GPS receivers critical to national security and public safety would experience remediable harmful interference," NITA said. The FCC needs to stay the order and, essentially, go back to the condition drawing board.   

To grant the stay, the FCC would have to conclude that NITA was likely to prevail on the merits, would suffer "irreparable harm" absent a stay, that the stay would not hurt other parties, and that a stay is in the public interest.   

Ligado told the FCC Friday (May 29) that NTIA's petition met none of those benchmarks.  

“NTIA’s extraordinary request to stop the FCC’s decision from taking effect is outrageous," the company said. "Because NTIA did not win on the merits, it has instead tried to turn routine policy disagreements into a lockdown of the FCC’s regular and proper process. The FCC’s order does not harm NTIA; rather, it is NTIA that would harm Ligado and the American public by halting the company’s progress toward building industrial 5G networks that will enhance economic competitiveness, create jobs and protect our national security.”

The Trump Administration has asked the FCC to stay and reconsider its decision to allow Ligado to use satellite spectrum adjacent to GPS for a terrestrial broadband network, exhibiting a clear divide with top House Republicans. 

That came in two FCC filings from the National Telecommunications & Information Administration (NTIA), the White House's chief communications policy adviser.  

Saying it was filing "on behalf of the executive branch," NTIA said Ligado "should not be permitted to deploy its network until NTIA’s Petition for Reconsideration or Clarification (Petition) is addressed and executive branch concerns of harmful interference to federal government and other GPS devices are satisfactorily resolved." 

NTIA was referencing a petition for reconsideration it had filed saying the FCC needed to conduct further testing and the order at least modified to prevent harmful interference. 

The FCC voted unanimously to allow Ligado to proceed, conditioned on power limits, a "kill switch" if interference resulted, based on FCC engineering assessments FCC chair Ajit Pai said made the item good to go. 

But NTIA said that was hardly the case: Based on what it said were the FCC's "unworkable conditions while still uncertain whether GPS receivers critical to national security and public safety would experience remediable harmful interference," NITA said the FCC needs to stay the order and, essentially, go back to the condition drawing board.  

To grant the stay, the FCC would have to conclude that NITA was likely to prevail on the merits, would suffer "irreparable harm" absent a stay, that the stay would not hurt other parties, and that a stay is in the public interest.  

NTIA said its petition meets that four-part test.

Some top House Republicans have sided with the FCC. But there is plenty of division in Congress over the issue.

The FCC got letters from members of both the House and Senate Armed Services Committees, and from both sides of the aisle, asking it to stay the decision and/or rethink it. 

At a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing three weeks ago, chairman James Inhofe (R-Okla.) said a few powerful people had rushed a hasty decision over the weekend (referring to the FCC) that the President (a big DOD fan) was not clued-in on, something he said he knew first hand was the case. 

Almost three dozen members of the Senate from both sides of the aisle and led by Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, are calling on the FCC to stay and reconsider its decision to allow Ligado to launch a terrestrial broadband network adjacent to GPS satellite spectrum. 

That came in a letter Friday (May 15) to all five FCC commissioners. The senators said the FCC's decision's impact would be "devastating [to] our military and countless industries that rely on its signals. 

Related: FCC, Ligado Draw Major Fire in Armed Services Committee 

“We urge the Federal Communications Commission to immediately stay and reconsider their Order on this matter, more fully consider the technical concerns raised by numerous federal agencies and private sector stakeholders, and outline a path forward that adequately addresses these concerns," they said. 

The letter follows a hearing in Inhofe's committee this last week that featured top DOD figures, joined by Inhofe, slamming the FCC and the decision. 

At the hearing, Inhofe said the issue boiled down to risk and he said that risk should not come at the benefit of one company and its investors. He appeared convinced that Ligado's service would interfere with GPS, including military guidance systems, and said such interference with GPS would hurt the entire economy. At the end of the day, he said "economic security is national security."  

The FCC is pushing back hard on Republicans and Democrats and military brass who were sharply critical of the commission at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing Wednesday (May 6).  

The hearing featured only Department of Defense witnesses arguing the FCC had recklessly and hastily approved a "bait and switch" plan by Ligado to launch a terrestrial broadband service that would, by definition interfere with critical GPS systems like missile guidance and aircraft positioning. 

"Given all of the untrue statements being made at the hearing, it is difficult to know where to begin," said a spokesman for FCC chairman Ajit Pai.  

"For example, the repeated claim that federal agencies unanimously oppose our order is blatantly false, as our decision has been endorsed by the Secretary of State and Attorney General." 

Related: FCC Approves Ligado Terrestrial Broadband Service 

One Republican at the hearing did ask the witnesses about the support for the program by Attorney General Bill Barr and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, whether their position had changed and why they would have supported the Ligado decision if it were such a threat. There was no response. 

"Moreover," said the spokesman, "the Department of Defense (and every executive branch agency that is part of the Interdepartment Radio Advisory Committee) was given our draft decision last autumn, so the assertion that they were blindsided by it this April is preposterous. More importantly, nothing said today changes the basic facts that the metric used by the Department of Defense to measure harmful interference does not, in fact, measure harmful interference and that the testing on which they are relying took place at dramatically higher power levels than the FCC approved. 

"The bottom line here is that the FCC made a unanimous, bipartisan decision based on sound engineering principles" the spokesman said. "We stand by that decision 100% and will not be dissuaded by baseless fearmongering."   

The Trump Administration has launched an initiative to boost the resilience of critical infrastructure, including telecommunications, that relies on Positioning, Navigation, and Timing (PNT) services (GPS being the most familiar one of those). 

President Donald Trump signed an executive order Wednesday (Feb. 12) on the responsible use of PNT that "directs the Federal Government to develop guidance that mitigates the [cybersecurity] risks of disruption to critical infrastructure that rely on PNT services." 

It is the first executive order on PNT use, said a senior White House official. PNT is used for smart phone applications, intelligence transport, precision agriculture, among many other things. The order is meant to provide tools for mitigating potential threats to PNT and also educating the public about how critical those services are. 

According to PNT expert Kevin Coggins, VP of Booz Allen Hamilton, PNT "enables everything from our smartphones to bank transactions," and is the same system "behind the majority of U.S. critical infrastructure, from power generation and telecommunications to our ability to transport goods and services."  

A key to the executive order will be NIST's creation, in partnership with the private and public sector, of so-called "PNT profiles" that identify the "systems, networks and assets that are dependent on PNT services." The idea is to help those sectors detect disruption and understand and manage the risks. The profiles will be reviewed every two years. Coggins has estimated that the loss of PNT could cost the country $10 billion per day.  

The Trump plan is also to test vulnerabilities in the PNT system, then update the profiles accordingly. Coggins calls GPS an old standard that is "easy to disrupt."

The profiles will also be used to draft language in government contracts for PNT-related products or services as a way to encourage the private sector to voluntarily develop robust PNT cybersecurity. 

The order directs the development of a plan to test non-satellite based positioning services--fiber, for example--or multiple PNT services to provide alternatives in the event of system compromise. 

The National Institute of Standards and Technology has already created a fiber-based time calibration service that telecommunications companies can use for a global time standard that White House officials say is more accurate than the current internet-based standard by a factor of one thousand.  

“President Trump’s commitment to making America safe and resilient is put into action by this Executive Order that will make the positioning, navigation, and timing services that keep our country running more reliable,” said Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross. “The efforts resulting from this action will help protect against costly disruptions in PNT services that can put Americans in harm’s way.” 

“The GPS Innovation Alliance (GPSIA) welcomes today’s Executive Order recognizing the critical economic and societal benefits of GPS and other Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS)," said J. David Grossman, executive director of the GPS Innovation Alliance. "Resiliency is among the core attributes that have made GPS the gold standard for delivering positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT) functions to our military as well as a wide range of other sectors, including transportation, agriculture, electricity, and finance. Today's Executive Order represents a crucial next step in ongoing efforts to maintain the security, robustness, and redundancy of PNT capabilities, including GPS, that millions of Americans rely on every day. GPSIA looks forward to working with key government stakeholders to support the implementation of this effort.”