On May 22, 2020, Iridium Communications, Aireon LLC, Flyht Aerospace Solutions and Skytrac Systems filed a Petition for Reconsideration at the FCC over its Ligado decision.
In the petition, the groups argue the following:
“The Commission repeatedly accepted Ligado’s claims at face value despite overwhelming evidence that Ligado’s operations will cause harmful interference with a wide range of civilian and military operations. The Order violates core requirements of the Administrative Procedure Act, entirely ignoring material evidence and arguments that spoke directly to the inquiry before it and offering explanations that ran counter to the record. The Commission should reconsider the Order and deny Ligado’s requests.
The Commission erroneously dismissed the public interest harms associated with a grant of Ligado’s modification request. Iridium and others submitted reams of evidence, argument, and technical analysis showing that Ligado’s operations would cause harmful interference, undermining billions of dollars of investment and jeopardizing national security. The Order sidestepped these concerns, insisting that there would likely be no such interference and that any harmful interference would be remedied by the “conditions” the Commission imposed on Ligado. These premises were badly mistaken. The record included abundant studies and analyses proving that Ligado’s operations would produce harmful interference – material the Order dismissed on the flimsiest of grounds. The Commission inexplicably applied 2005 out-of- band emissions limits despite evidence that the assumptions supporting such limits no longer apply. It offers no technical analysis of its own in support of this choice, nor can it point to any material supplied by Ligado itself. Whereas Iridium did submit such analysis, the Order rejects that evidence, largely on the basis that Iridium assumed the power levels that Ligado had proposed, rather than the level selected by the Commission – even though the Commission easily could have modified the results and seen that the study showed harmful interference at that level, too. The Order likewise dismissed the interference concerns raised by the executive branch –specifically, the Department of Defense, the Department of Transportation, and the Department of Commerce’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration, each of which is assigned statutory responsibility with respect to the interference concerns at play here.”
- The Order ultimately acknowledges that some harmful interference is likely, establishing purported mitigation mechanisms. These measures violate Section 343 of the Communications Act, which demands not that the Commission urge parties to discuss interference but that the Commission resolve interference. They also contravene Section 25.255 of the Commission’s rules, which requires the ATC provider to remedy any harmful interference. In any event, the “remedies” the Order imposes simply will not work. The agreements Ligado has made with several GPS providers do not provide any cause to believe that Ligado can or would reach similar agreements with others, particularly after receiving FCC approval. Likewise, the suggestion that imposition of a new power limitation in the band adjacent to Iridium will address Iridium’s concerns is a non-sequitur, because, while an improvement, even the new power limit will not cure the harmful interference at issue. The Order’s proposed mitigation measures with respect to military users fares no better – the Order requires consultation but does not mandate any action by Ligado if it does not agree that it will produce harmful interference. Even if it did, Ligado is barred by law from providing funds to DOD for the replacement of equipment.
- The Order barely addresses the alleged public interest benefits of Ligado’s offering. Its anemic discussion merely regurgitates Ligado’s talking points – including its incorrect contention that its service will promote 5G – without even addressing record critiques of those claims or balancing the purported benefits of Ligado’s hypothetical offering against its attendant harms. Even so, the best the Commission can do is to conclude that the proposed service “could” become a useful offering.
- Finally, the Commission committed error in waiving the “integrated service” rule. For starters, it should have acted via rulemaking, as it has before in similar matters. It further failed to satisfy the basic criteria for waiver by showing that waiver better served the public interest than application of the rule or articulating the special circumstances warranting waiver. Indeed, it could not have done so, because waiver here will prolong or exacerbate Ligado’s failure to invest meaningfully in the MSS marketplace. The conditions applied to the 2011 waiver did not prompt Ligado to deploy meaningful satellite service then, and there is no reason to believe they will now. The instant waiver will further undermine the public interest by eviscerating the long-standing protections that have allowed satellite services in the L-band to thrive.