WASHINGTON, DC, (April 24, 2025) — The Satellite Safety Alliance (SSA) and 93 major companies and organizations, today marked the five-year anniversary of the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) woeful Ligado Order, by sending letters stating the need for it to be overturned to President Trump and Congressional leadership. The letter urges the President and the chairs and ranking members of the House and Senate armed services and commerce committees to work with the FCC on granting petitions for reconsideration that will help prevent the building of Ligado’s harmful terrestrial wireless network. The proposed network is designed to inappropriately use spectrum reserved for satellite communications, causing significant interference to other services.
Ligado’s network would threaten a wide range of critical government and commercial services, including military communications, private satellite communication, GPS, agriculture, aviation, weather forecasting, and more. Satellite Safety Alliance offered the following comment on the letter and fifth anniversary:
For over two decades, Ligado and its predecessors have tried and failed to build a terrestrial network that wouldn’t harm GPS, national security, and other critical interests. The FCC’s Ligado Order has faced unprecedented opposition, including from 14 federal agencies and over 90 organizations representing huge swaths of the economy—from aviation and agriculture to science and manufacturing. Rarely does any issue garner agreement from such a wide and divergent group of constituencies.
Congress spoke clearly and decisively, finding through independent analysis that the Ligado Order poses unacceptable risks of interference to GPS, satellite communications, weather forecasting, and other services. Countless federal staff hours and resources have gone to reviewing, debating, and litigating this issue. It is past time the FCC put the issue to rest by granting the pending petitions for reconsideration.
The SSA trusts the federal government, inclusive of the President, Congress and related agencies will now take the appropriate actions to safeguard the national and public interest by calling for reconsideration of the Ligado Order.
Read the letter to Congressional leadership here and the letter to President Trump here.
About the Satellite Safety Alliance: The Satellite Safety Alliance is a group of likeminded associations, satellite communications (SATCOM) providers and users, and academics working together to keep our world safe and productive. The alliance seeks to protect critical satellite communications services whose operations are under threat from harmful interference by a misguided proposal from Ligado Networks (Ligado) to insert a terrestrial-only service in the middle of a satellite spectrum band. As providers and users of GPS and satellite services, the Satellite Safety Alliance opposes the approval of Ligado’s proposal.