Filings

Petition to Dismiss Dangerous Ligado Proposal

For nearly a decade Ligado Networks LLC (“Ligado”) has subjected the FCC to a steady barrage of waiver requests, license modification applications, amendments to those applications, and ex parte presentations, all attempting to abandon its dwindling satellite business in order to gain the Commission’s blessing for its constantly evolving terrestrial wireless business plans that seem more attuned to political expedience than a response to actual market needs.  In response, the Commission has opened multiple separate dockets to deal with the varied, overlapping, and at times conflicting issues posed by these filings.  The Commission and other stakeholders have now devoted over 9,900 pages of filings, multiple Congressional hearings, and countless meetings to addressing one company’s spectrum arbitrage effort, and the public has nothing to show for it.  Throughout this process, the Coalition of Aviation, Satellite Communications, and Weather Information Users has repeatedly highlighted Ligado’s failure to meaningfully address the harmful interference that its proposed operations will cause to critical services in adjacent frequency bands. Recent filings from the Department of Defense and the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (“NTIA”) express similar concerns about harmful interference from Ligado’s operations, and make it clear that grant of Ligado’s applications will have substantial, costly, and far-reaching implications for federal and non-federal operations alike. Given Ligado’s failure to adequately address the harmful interference at the heart of its proposals and the convoluted and dated record for this proceeding, the most appropriate action for the FCC to take is to deny the Ligado applications by terminating the associated dockets.

Ligado dismissal letter as filed