Ligado: DOD, DOC Put Up Roadblocks to Deployment

Ligado said it’s progressing on deploying its spectrum but faces resistance from DOD and the Commerce Department, in a quarterly report to the FCC posted Monday in docket 11-109.Ligado has a “partnership with Mavenir to develop satellite 5G IoT base stations for advanced connectivity,” it said: “This critical partnership is intended to enable always-on, continental coverage by helping to integrate our satellite and terrestrial networks when we deploy.” Ligado is also “partnering with a major 5G chipset vendor to generate 5G chipsets for Ligado’s bands and with a major IoT chipset solution provider to produce satellite 5G IoT chipsets.” DOD and Commerce “have actively heaved roadblocks in the path of the Company in the name of unsubstantiated and baseless concerns of harmful interference to GPS,” the company said: “They assert sweeping concerns and yet have never produced any specific information about that asserted harmful interference despite repeated requests from Ligado and others.” Neither department commented.