On May 22, 2020, Trimble filed a Petition for Reconsideration at the FCC over its Ligado decision.
In the petition, Trimble notes:
“Founded in 1978, Trimble is a leading provider of, among other things, advanced positioning and productivity solutions using Global Navigation Satellite System technology, including the U.S.-based GPS, as well as laser, optical, and inertial technologies. Trimble has been an active participant throughout this proceeding, both individually and through the GPS Innovation Alliance and its predecessor, the U.S. GPS Industry Coalition, and the Coalition to Save Our GPS, to ensure that Ligado’s proposed operations (and those of its predecessor-in-interest) do not adversely affect the myriad critical applications that depend on GPS. The Ligado Order fails to do that, which is why Trimble submits this Petition.
The Commission made several material errors and omissions in adopting the Ligado Order.
- First, it adopted the Ligado Order through an opaque process without engaging in a notice-and-comment rulemaking and disregarding key inputs from the federal agencies with expertise in GPS gained from utilizing it as a critical utility in accomplishing their public missions. Instead, the FCC effectively outsourced its decision-making to experts hired by Ligado. In so doing, the Commission violated its obligations under Section 343 of the Communications Act.
- Second, the Commission failed to include a reasoned cost-benefit analysis – merely relying on promises and press releases from Ligado to establish the purported public interest benefits of Ligado’s applications, while failing to systematically consider the costs and risks to GPS and the applications and critical activities that depend on it.
- Third, it erred by misunderstanding or mischaracterizing agreements between Ligado and a handful of GPS manufacturers to reach the false conclusion that they “concurred” with or supported Ligado’s applications.
- Fourth, the Commission dramatically underestimated the potential for interference to GPS devices by relying on a vague legal standard of harmful interference and ad hoc, limited analyses of Key Performance Indicators as opposed to the readily measurable and well-established 1 dB metric for measuring interference to GPS devices.
- Fifth, even though it acknowledged that an unknown number of the nearly 900 million existing GPS receivers will suffer interference, the FCC’s “stringent conditions” intended to mitigate and address incidents of interference are entirely unworkable, especially because the Commission has outsourced the job of policing interference to Ligado itself.”