Inhofe, 31 Other Senators Urge FCC to 'Stay and Reconsider' Ligado Plan Approval

Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., led an expected letter (see 2005130038) Friday with 31 other senators urging the FCC to “immediately stay and reconsider” its approval of Ligado’s L-band plan. Inhofe and other Armed Services members blasted the FCC during a hearing earlier this month for backing Ligado (see 2005060065). Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Roger Wicker, R-Miss., is contemplating a separate hearing (see 2005080043). The order “does not adequately protect adjacent band operations,” including for GPS and satellite communications “from harmful interference that would impact countless commercial and military activities,” the lawmakers wrote Chairman Ajit Pai and other commissioners. “The hurried nature of the circulation and consideration” of the order “was not conducive to addressing the many technical concerns raised by affected stakeholders.” The FCC’s “accelerated timeline” for approving the order, which came two business days after it was formally announced, “was not adequate,” the senators said. “We are concerned that the FCC has discounted testing and assessments conducted” by other federal agencies in opposition to Ligado’s plan and that the commission “did not provide a technical forum to resolve the significant disconnects between this testing and Ligado’s privately funded testing.” The order’s “process for remediation and mitigation of interference to GPS users” remains “unclear and wholly inadequate to a technology of this importance to the American way of life,” the lawmakers said. Other signers include Senate Armed Services ranking member Jack Reed, D-R.I., and Senate Commerce ranking member Maria Cantwell, D-Wash. Five other Senate Commerce members also signed: Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill.; Deb Fischer, R-Neb.; Gary Peters, D-Mich.; Rick Scott, R-Fla.; and Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz. " Any allegation that the [FCC] moved too quickly in making a decision on this matter is preposterous," a spokesperson emailed. "There were multiple rounds of public comment on the Ligado application, which has been pending for many years. Federal agencies were provided with the Commission's draft decision back in October 2019." The FCC "imposed stringent conditions on Ligado to ensure that its operations would not interfere with GPS, including dramatically lower power limits and a substantial guard band between the spectrum where it can operate and the spectrum allocated to GPS," the spokesperson said. "The bottom line remains that the FCC made a unanimous, bipartisan decision based on sound engineering principles, and we stand by that decision."