Executive Director, American Meteorological Society
CEO/ Executive Director, American Geophysical Union

“If allowed to move forward, the spectrum sharing Ligado proposes will likely impede needed access to real-time and near-real-time data from GOES-R satellites, except to a few NOAA ground stations. The alternate cloud-based transmission system currently proposed by Ligado will not support critical forecasting and communication needs in the most severe weather situations, such as hurricane-induced coastal flooding, extreme precipitation events, or time-critical tornado warning predictions.”

“More than 70 Earth science community stakeholder entities, ranging from small to large companies, state, local and foreign governments, and international and domestic organizations provided comments or briefings to the FCC expressing considerable concern about Ligado’s proposal.”

“In addition, we are concerned about Ligado’s engagement with the Earth and space science community. Most recently, members of the meteorological community met with Ligado this past July during an American Meteorological Society meeting in Alabama to express concerns with their proposal. In our judgment, Ligado has been unresponsive to our comments. The company has not modified any of its statements and has been dismissive of our concerns. Instead, in their most recent correspondence to Administrators Sullivan and Strickling, it questioned the Earth science community’s understanding of physics. Such communications suggest that Ligado is dismissive of these issues and not a good faith partner in our effort to protect the nation’s severe weather forecasting capabilities.”

“We urge you to encourage the FCC to reject Ligado’s sharing proposal outright without establishing a further FCC Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on this matter.”