Brand New Conspiracy: Gov't Won't Let New Wireless Network Compete!

Wouldn't it be great to have a cheaper wireless bill each month? Most people know they're getting taken to the cleaners with all the strange taxes and fees at the bottom of their monthly statement.

The average cell-phone user spends about $600 a year on mobile service, while families that talk, text, or use other phone features more than average can spend upward of $1,800. And the bigger your bill, the more you get tapped for service taxes and surcharges, which tack on an average of 14.5 percent.

Enter a new company called LightSquared, a Virginia-based firm aiming to establish a new wireless broadband network. LightSquared executives and the company’s lawyers say the firm has been targeted by a broad and POWERFUL coalition of entrenched interests who falsely cite the potential for interference with GPS systems to conceal their true motive: to prevent LightSquared from revolutionizing the wireless industry, by enabling smaller carriers to compete on a national level.

“We have taken the step to fix any interference issue that the GPS or any of the agencies have come forward with, and have been concerned with,” says LightSquared. “These fixes are technology issues. It's not a physics issue.”

But there's yet another layer to this so-called conspiracy: It turns out, when Obama was a senator he invested $100,000 in LightSquared, as did some of his associates.

It turns out, when a four-star Air Force general who oversees Air Force Space Command walked into a highly secured room on Capitol Hill a week ago to give a classified briefing to lawmakers and staff about the problems he saw with the LightSquared plan, he dropped a surprise. Pressed by members, Gen. William Shelton said the White House tried to pressure him to change his testimony to make it more favorable to a company tied to a large Democratic donor. LightSquared had thrown some money at Obama's campaign and as I said earlier, Obama was heavily invested.

LightSquare insists they did not ask the general to alter any testimony and calls this a plant: “No one,” Falcone answered, when Kelly asked if anyone at LightSquared had obtained an advance copy of Shelton’s testimony. “I didn't have it, nobody in the company had it. So I don't know where that came from. It's just people planting things.”


This is an interesting event to keep your eyes on....

Originally posted by MRuss
Enter a new company called LightSquared

By coincidence I read about these guys just a few days ago.

The backstory is...
Frequency spectrum is in short supply, and so when Lightsquared aquired a company, Skyterra, that had the "ownership" of frequency spectrum of 1.525 GHz to 1.559 GHz they figured they had the means to create a new wireless network.
This frequency range is *supposed* to be used with satellites, so the signals are weak by the time they are recieved on the ground, but Lightsquared somehow got FCC approval to use this frequency range on the ground.

GPS satellites use a frequency of 1.57542 Ghz.
The signals from GPS satellites are indeed weak, as anyone with trouble getting a fix on their location would know, so a nearby transmitter on an adjacent frequency can indeed overload the GPS receiver.

Everything I've read so far indicates it is a real, non imaginary problem, and the FCC should revoke Lightsquard's right to use 1.525 GHz to 1.559 GHz on the ground.

Nobody is saying Lightsquared cant start up a new wireless internet company, its just that the frequencies they have the "ownership" of are really really dumb ones to use for this purpose.

Wow, sad to see this.
Looks like the government not only kills intellectual competition....but also technological competition as well.

they already got all your info on lock anyways why let anyone one new even 'touch' it

I'm with Alfa on this one, you can see this kind of effect on an oscilloscope, when Frquency is seperated by that little a cellphone with in 30 feet can screw up the picture.

reply to post by MRuss
This from your OP:

It turns out, when a four-star Air Force general who oversees Air Force Space Command walked into a highly secured room on Capitol Hill a week ago to give a classified briefing to lawmakers and staff about the problems he saw with the LightSquared plan, he dropped a surprise. Pressed by members, Gen. William Shelton said the White House tried to pressure him to change his testimony to make it more favorable to a company tied to a large Democratic donor.

This should be the focus of the issue.

If your title said: Air Force General says 'Obama asked me to lie to Congress', that would have helped me find it when I was using the search function earlier.