Planned Wireless Internet Network Threatens Gps

Media, Communication & Society

04/04/11

Planned wireless Internet network threatens GPS

(A Bits Story)

A Virginia company called LightsSquared was given permission by Government Officials to build a nationwide ultra-fast broadband networking system. In doing this LightSquared will be using air-waves which run parallel to the same signals used for GPS, in turn posing a real over-riding threat to GPS usages. Sensitive satellite receivers designed to pick up weak signals could be overwhelmed by LightSquared’s high-powered signals from as many as 40,000 transmitters on the ground. “The potential impact of GPS interference is so vast that it’s hard to get your head around” said Jim Kirkland, vice president and general counsel of Trimble Navigation Ltd., which makes GPS systems. “Think 40,000 GPS dead spots covering millions of square miles in cities and towns all across the US.” (CBS News Article – Paragraph 6 and 7)

It’s feared that LightSquared’s new network could debilitate, overpower and jam the GPS system leaving interferences with everything from airplane and police car navigational devices to consumer navigational devices. 40% of commercial and private planes use these GPS navigational systems and they are at the biggest risk considering their only source of back up if interferences and disruptions should occur is non-accurate, choppy, ground-based radio signals and for some older planes no back up sources at all. “With interference, a pilot could go off course and not even realize it,” said Chris Daney, a spokesman for the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association. (CBS News Article – Paragraph 9) With LightSquared’s plans in the works the Federal Aviation Administration’s own multi-million dollar plan to upgrade the nation’s air traffic control system is at risk of being undermined by LightSquared. According to Public Safety officials,

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LightSquared possess a potential threat to the tracking and dispatch of police cars,...