Iridium Interference Analysis Becoming an Issue in Ligado Proceeding

Iridium is lobbying the FCC about the big risks it sees of interference from Ligado's planned terrestrial low-power service, while Ligado is asking the agency to make public the supposed basis of those worries. In an ex parte filing posted Tuesday in docket 11-109, Iridium recapped meetings Maureen McLaughlin, vice president-public policy, had with aides to Commissioners Mignon Clyburn, Mike O'Rielly and Jessica Rosenworcel on its technical paper submitted this month in which Iridium argued Ligado's LTE deployment plans would cause too-high out-of-band-emissions (OOBE) to its current system and forthcoming Next constellation (see 1609020029). Saying it doesn't oppose Ligado's plans per se, Iridium said minus some interference agreement being worked out with Ligado, the FCC needs to impose on any Ligado approvals conditions that include sufficient interference protections. Those conditions should reduce OOBE emissions from Ligado's mobile terminals into Iridium's use of 1617.775-1626.5 MHz and could include exclusion zones that prohibit use of Ligado user terminals around airport facilities to protect aviation satellite communication services, Iridium said. Ligado, in a filing in the same docket Tuesday, pointed to that technical paper and argued against the redactions, saying any confidentiality interest in the redacted information "is far outweighed by the public interest in subjecting Iridium's claims to critical analysis." Ligado also called it "critical" that it and other parties in the proceeding be able to fully assess the Iridium analysis and underlying data. It said Iridium denied a Ligado request to provide the full analysis and instead told the satellite company to seek it from the FCC, potentially under a protective order. Ligado said that if the agency decided some part of that analysis shouldn't be made public, the commission at the least needs to grant Ligado and other parties access to the full analysis subject to protections. "The FCC has a well-established process for reviewing requests for confidentiality of commercially sensitive information, which Iridium has followed," Iridium emailed us. "We have every confidence in the Commission’s staff’s ability to handle the request. Iridium has no objection to Ligado gaining access to the information through a Protective Order established by the Commission."