[House Hearing, 112 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
LIGHTSQUARED: THE IMPACT TO
SMALL BUSINESS GPS USERS
=======================================================================
HEARING
before the
COMMITTEE ON SMALL BUSINESS
UNITED STATES
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED TWELFTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
HEARING HELD
OCTOBER 12, 2011
__________
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] TONGRESS.#13
Small Business Committee Document Number 112-039
Available via the GPO Website: http://www.fdsys.gov
U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
71-500 WASHINGTON : 2011
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office,
http://bookstore.gpo.gov. For more information, contact the GPO Customer Contact Center, U.S. Government Printing Office. Phone 202�09512�091800, or 866�09512�091800 (toll-free). E-mail, [email protected].
HOUSE COMMITTEE ON SMALL BUSINESS
SAM GRAVES, Missouri, Chairman
ROSCOE BARTLETT, Maryland
STEVE CHABOT, Ohio
STEVE KING, Iowa
MIKE COFFMAN, Colorado
MICK MULVANEY, South Carolina
SCOTT TIPTON, Colorado
JEFF LANDRY, Louisiana
JAIME HERRERA BEUTLER, Washington
ALLEN WEST, Florida
RENEE ELLMERS, North Carolina
JOE WALSH, Illinois
LOU BARLETTA, Pennsylvania
RICHARD HANNA, New York
ROBERT SCHILLING, Illinois
NYDIA VELAZQUEZ, New York, Ranking Member
KURT SCHRADER, Oregon
MARK CRITZ, Pennsylvania
JASON ALTMIRE, Pennsylvania
YVETTE CLARKE, New York
JUDY CHU, California
DAVID CICILLINE, Rhode Island
CEDRIC RICHMOND, Louisiana
JANICE HAHN, California
GARY PETERS, Michigan
BILL OWENS, New York
BILL KEATING, Massachusetts
Lori Salley, Staff Director
Paul Sass, Deputy Staff Director
Barry Pineles, Chief Counsel
Michael Day, Minority Staff Director
C O N T E N T S
----------
OPENING STATEMENTS
Page
Graves, Hon. Sam................................................. 1
Velazquez, Hon. Nydia M.......................................... 2
WITNESSES
Dennis B. Boykin IV, Managing Principal, DB4 Consulting, LLC,
Leesburg, VA................................................... 3
Rick Greene, Precision Agronomy Manager, MFA Incorporated,
Columbia, MO................................................... 5
Jeff Carlisle, Executive Vice President, LightSquared, Reston, VA 7
Tim Taylor, President & CEO, FreeFlight Systems, Irving, TX...... 9
APPENDIX
Prepared Statements for the Record:
Dennis B. Boykin IV, Managing Principal, DB4 Consulting, LLC,
Leesburg, VA............................................... 28
Rick Greene, Precision Agronomy Manager, MFA Incorporated,
Columbia, MO............................................... 34
Jeff Carlisle, Executive Vice President, LightSquared,
Reston, VA................................................. 36
Tim Taylor, President & CEO, FreeFlight Systems, Irving, TX.. 62
Questions for the Record:
Mulvaney questions for the record............................ 70
Schilling questions for the record........................... 72
Answers for the Record:
Carlisle responses to Mulvaney questions for the record...... 73
Carlisle responses to Schilling questions for the record..... 78
Carlisle supplemental responses to Mulvaney questions for the
record..................................................... 78
Additional Materials for the Record:
American Farm Bureau Federation Statement for the Record..... 82
ASABE/ASA Joint Comment to the FCC........................... 85
MFA-GPS Facts and Figures--Revised........................... 87
LIGHTSQUARED: THE IMPACT TO SMALL BUSINESS GPS USERS
----------
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 12, 2011
House of Representatives,
Committee on Small Business,
Washington, DC.
The Committee met, pursuant to call, at 1:02 p.m., in Room
2360, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Sam Graves [Chairman
of the Committee] presiding.
Present: Representatives Graves, Bartlett, Chabot, King,
Mulvaney, Tipton, Herrera Beutler, West, Hanna, Schilling,
Schrader, Cicilline, Owens, and Hahn.
Chairman Graves. Good afternoon, everyone. We will bring
this hearing to order. I want to thank all of our witnesses for
being here today. This is a very important hearing. I know some
of you traveled a ways, and I appreciate you being here.
Today we will hear about how LightSquared's proposal is
going to impact the ability of small businesses to access the
global positioning system, GPS. Thousands of small businesses
rely on an accurate GPS signal for their day-to-day operations,
and potential interference could severely handicap or impair
those businesses.
LightSquared aims at providing wireless 4G broadband
coverage to 260 million Americans in both rural and urban
communities by 2015. I agree that we need to find innovative
ways to provide high-speed Internet access to underserved
areas. Access to high-speed Internet provides small businesses,
especially those located in rural communities, with the
opportunity and resources to compete in an electronic and
global marketplace. However, such innovation should not
jeopardize the currently established systems, including GPS,
and add more unnecessary burdens to those who use them.
Since it was first launched, taxpayers have invested over
$35 billion in the GPS system. This national asset has become
an integral part of our economy. We can see the value-added
benefits in a variety of sectors. From a safer and more
reliable energy grid to precise agriculture mapping, nearly
every industry has benefited from this technology. Moreover,
recent studies estimate that GPS supports over 3 million U.S.
jobs and contributes over $3 trillion in economic activity.
Federal test results from LightSquared's proposal showed
significant interference on all types of GPS receivers. This
alarmed many small businesses that could be required to replace
or retrofit their current GPS system. This would be an enormous
cost to small business. Even though LightSquared is committed
to spend $50 million to retrofit Federal GPS devices, this does
nothing for the nearly 1 million small businesses that are left
to pay the bill that will easily cost billions of dollars.
Moving forward, I am confident that we can find a solution
to provide more broadband to rural areas while not jeopardizing
any small business GPS users. Again, I want to thank all of our
witnesses for their participation. And I now yield to Ranking
Member Velazquez for her opening remarks.
Ms. Velazquez. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Good afternoon, and
thank you to all the witnesses for being here today. Expanding
access to broadband is not just about technology. It is about
job creation and growth. Through its adoption, companies can
reach new markets across the globe while reducing costs at
home. In fact, the number of jobs depending on broadband and
information technology is expected to grow by 25 percent over
the next 10 years. This makes the expansion of broadband
connectivity a critical priority and is the main reason the
administration set a target of reaching 98 percent of the
population through such technology.
Today we will examine a proposal that will advance this
objective. This plan, which centers on constructing a hybrid
ground-based satellite network, would have broad benefits.
Beyond its immediate payoff, widespread broadband adoption will
mean new economic opportunity for communities across the
Nation, particularly rural America. For individuals looking to
launch a new enterprise, broadband offers lower start-up costs.
This is especially important now as many dislocated workers are
looking to entrepreneurship as a way to replace lost income.
For the established small business, high-speed Internet can
expand a firm's client base using a company Web site, social
networking, or other forms of online advertising. Firms can
utilize voice and video communication to connect with customers
around the world and reach previously untapped markets. They
can store data on line and access office productivity tools.
While the proposal we are considering today shows promise
to accomplish these goals, we have to consider its interference
potential. One example is GPS, which serves a critical role in
aviation safety and efficiency. In fact, the Department of
Transportation's NextGen program focuses on modernizing this
platform, and it is expected to create 160,000 jobs in 4 years,
the same number the aviation industry lost in a decade.
With 360,000 GPS-equipped aircraft and over three million
jobs, we must ensure interference does not undermine this
growing industry. Not only must we address the aviation
industry's concerns, we also need to investigate the plan's
small businesses impact. Business owners in a variety of
trades, like precision agriculture and construction, rely on
GPS technology for its cost-saving benefits. Small farmers use
GPS to save $5 billion annually on water and fertilizer costs.
Inaccurate information or expensive equipment upgrades caused
by interference could result in small business job losses.
Recognizing these concerns, it is imperative to test this
plan's technology. Doing so will ensure small businesses are
not left with costly burdens. Regardless if this new plan is
ultimately adopted, we must continue to push forward with R&D
and evaluation. At some point, either through the current
effort or subsequent endeavors, we will be able to mitigate GPS
interference successfully and bring the benefits of broadband
to nearly all small businesses and their customers. We should
not let a complication that has multiple solutions hinder
progress towards nationwide connectivity.
Time and again, advanced technologies have been a
springboard for growth. From mobile phones to biotechnology to
the Internet, new technologies have brought jobs and
prosperity. With this in mind, I look forward to hearing how we
can further foster innovation.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Graves. If Committee members have an opening
statement prepared, I would ask that they submit it for the
record. And just to explain to you the timing system, each of
you have 5 minutes, and the lights will indicate green for that
time period. When you are down to a minute it goes yellow, and
then red when you run out of time. If you run out of time, it
is not that big a deal, just don't go too far over.
This hearing has obviously--or this subject matter has been
heard in a lot of Committees on the Hill so far, Small Business
Committee, because it has such an impact here. But the Armed
Services Committee, Transportation Committee, the Science and
Technology Committee, the Agriculture Committee will probably
have a hearing on it. So it is of huge importance.
With that, we will go to our witnesses now so you each can
give your statements, and I am going to turn to Representative
West from Florida to introduce our first witness.
Mr. West. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Ranking Member. Our
first witness will be Mr. Dennis Boykin IV, the founder and
manager of DB4 Consulting. Mr. Boykin is a small business
owner, a veteran, licensed pilot, and a proud aircraft owner.
He is an Army veteran, an artilleryman with whom I served
together in 1991 in Desert Shield, Desert Storm, in the 5th
Field Artillery, and Dennis, it is great to see you again, and
hopefully all is well with your family. He has been flying for
over 30 years. Mr. Boykin will be testifying on behalf of the
Leesburg Executive Airport Commission. Mr. Boykin.
STATEMENTS OF DENNIS B. BOYKIN, MANAGING PRINCIPAL, DB4
CONSULTING, LLC, LEESBURG, VA, ON BEHALF OF
THE LEESBURG EXECUTIVE AIRPORT COMMISSION; RICK GREENE,
PRECISION AGRONOMY MANAGER, MFA INCORPORATED, COLUMBIA, MO, ON
BEHALF OF THE AGRICULTURE RETAILERS ASSOCIATION; JEFF CARLISLE,
EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT, LIGHTSQUARED, RESTON, VA; AND TIM
TAYLOR, PRESIDENT & CEO, FREEFLIGHT SYSTEMS, IRVING, TX, ON
BEHALF OF THE AIRCRAFT ELECTRONICS ASSOCIATION
STATEMENT OF DENNIS B. BOYKIN
Mr. Boykin. Chairman Graves, Ranking Member Velazquez,
members of the Committee, and old Army comrades, thank you for
the introduction and thank you for the opportunity to address
this critical issue today.
As Congressman West noted, critical to me not only as a
small business owner who owns high-precision GPS in order to
keep my aircraft safe and, more importantly, keep the people
underneath my aircraft safe, but in a leadership position as
leader of the Leesburg Executive Airport, concerned about the
welfare of our airport because we run a business.
I have three concerns regarding this potential interference
with high-precision GPS receivers: my family's safety, the
costs associated with the proposal, and the impact on our
general aviation infrastructure. I have spent nearly $40,000 on
GPS equipment installations over the last 8 years in two
airplanes. I am not unique in my community. Many of us have
spent a lot of money to increase our margin of safety while
running our businesses and flying our airplanes. And make no
mistake about it, GPS is a matter of life and death. This is
not hyperbole. I am a combat veteran, and I know something
about life-or-death situations, and although I know you hear a
lot of hyperbole sometimes about this issue, GPS is critical
not just to business but to life.
First let's talk about my airport in Leesburg. We have a
saying out there, as I serve the town and its residents in
running that airport, that airports are not about airplanes,
they are about commerce. Our airport provides an interstate
commerce benefit, bringing over 200 jobs and $80 million a year
in economic impact to Leesburg and Loudoun County, Virginia. We
have over 250 aircraft based at our field, and nearly all of
them are GPS equipped.
Now, the FAA estimates, if LightSquared deploys the system
as tested at Holloman Air Force Base a few months back, they
are estimating a $440 million a year negative economic impact
to general aviation, 800 lives lost per year, and $22 billion
in opportunity costs if NextGen isn't deployed. That is their
numbers, not mine. My estimate is a little more personal. I
don't want to have to go explain to residents in Leesburg and
to the town council why the airport is causing trouble.
In my second role managing a business, I am hearing
LightSquared's claims that their system won't interfere with
GPS. Then I read Mr. Russo's testimony to the House Armed
Services Committee Subcommittee on Strategic Forces that says
exactly the opposite. LightSquared claims they have a filter--
in fact Mr. Carlisle I think has one here with him--that will
magically solve the problem that they caused, in my opinion. Am
I expected to bear the expense of the certification,
installation, downtime, and test flights surrounding these
filters? Mr. Carlisle will tell you not, that Garmin should
provide that. Oh, by the way, the FAA hasn't certified these
yet.
Speaking of businesses, let's talk about environmental
impacts. Recently I took a business trip to Florida to an Army
conference. Made that trip on a direct routing, thanks to GPS.
Saved an enormous amount of fuel not following the airway
routes. This is the next--this is the entire precept behind
NextGen, direct routing. With any impact on GPS, we lose those
environmental improvements in the reduced carbon footprint of
each flight.
And, finally, I am concerned about the safety of every
flight. GPS signals enhanced by wide-area augmentation service
have created a precise flight environment today that is
unrivaled in our history. Flight is so much safer today than
when I learned to fly 30 years ago, I am no longer
uncomfortable in getting up in bad weather.
Now, let me put you in an entirely likely scenario. Imagine
yourself flying in my airplane at night, returning from a trip,
we are in the clouds, I am on a GPS/WAAS approach to runway 17
at Leesburg, and the screen goes blank because there is a
harmonic attenuation from the LightSquared cell tower I just
flew over. Now, the engineers will tell you that cell phone
towers only impact ground receivers. Every general aviation
pilot on the East Coast will tell you otherwise. And don't ask
me why I know this, but up to about 5,000 feet you can get a
good cell phone signal. I just happen to know that. There is
absolutely no reason to create this risk to life and property
without proper testing and without proper coordination.
Now, we are going to hear a lot of testimony about how
folks have fixed the problem already and there isn't an issue.
Frankly, I will remind everybody here that we are in a
Committee meeting chaired by someone from Missouri, and they
have a great saying in Missouri, ``Show Me.'' And I would like
somebody to put together a test that puts multiple base
stations, multiple handsets out on that test range at White
Sands in Holloman, and make sure this thing really does work
before we put lives at risk.
I have a little bit of experience. When I used to work for
the Motorola Corporation I had to get trained in RF
propagation. I am not an engineer, but I know that things can
interfere with each other, and I hope this Committee would have
something to say about how that works.
I thank you for your time and I thank you more importantly
for your service to our great Nation.
[The statement of Mr. Boykin follows on page 28.]
Chairman Graves. Thank you, Mr. Boykin.
Our next witness is Mr. Rick Greene. Rick is a precision
agronomy manager for MFA in Columbia, Missouri. In his role,
Rick helps family farmers utilize precision agriculture
technology to increase crop yields and efficiency. Rick is
testifying on behalf of Agriculture Retailers Association.
Thanks for being here.
STATEMENT OF RICK GREENE
Mr. Greene. Thank you, Chairman Graves and Ranking Member
Velazquez and members of the Committee. I appreciate the
opportunity to appear before you today. My name is Rick Greene,
I am here to testify on behalf of the Agriculture Retailers
Association, a trade association which represents ag retailers
and distributors of crop inputs, equipment, and services. ARA
members are scattered throughout all 50 States and range in
size from a fairly small family business to a large cooperative
with multiple locations.
I am a precision agronomy manager for MFA Incorporated, a
cooperative built by farmers for farmers. Our core business
includes sales, service, and inputs of seed, fertilizer,
precision agronomy, grain, feed, and livestock supplies.
I began my agricultural journey in 1995 when my father
first purchased a yield monitor with GPS. During that time it
was a struggle to operate this new type of technology and cope
with the inaccuracies of GPS. While at Iowa State, as accuracy
started to improve, I came to love what precision agriculture
can do for farming, by preserving the environment, minimizing
inputs, maximizing yield to give our farmers a greater return
on their investment.
So what is precision agriculture? Precision agriculture is
using the latest technology to provide sound agronomic
recommendations in a timely fashion in order to maximize yield,
manage inputs, preserve the environment to ensure farmers with
a sustainable way of farming.
So, do some of your areas of your lawn grow better than
others? Farm ground is the same way, only on a larger scale.
Since then, GPS technology has evolved exponentially. Fleet
vehicles use GPS for logistical tracking to minimize fuel
consumption. Tractors drive themselves within one inch worth of
accuracy to minimize overlap. Planters and sprayers turn off
individual sections and automatically reduce overapplication of
inputs. On-the-go sensors detect how much nitrogen a plant will
require. River levees are surveyed in two-thirds of the time
that it takes traditional surveyors. Aerial applicators vary
nitrogen rates on the fly to reduce runoff and increase plant
uptake. Irrigation systems vary water rates based on soil
characteristics to reduce water waste. And the list goes on.
We would not be able to perform any of these functions
without the high-accuracy GPS. Jess Lowenberg with Purdue
University did a study back in 2004 using an 1800-acre model
farm, and he found that a farmer that uses high-accuracy GPS
will decrease his hours of operation by 17 percent. That 17
percent is not only operation but it is also a decrease in
fuel, maintenance, and inputs like seed, pesticide, and
fertilizer. Times are changing, and the producer needs to be
more efficient in order to combat global competition.
Bruce Erickson, with the Purdue University, also did a
study on economic adoption of precision farming technologies.
From 2002 prices are up 350 percent in commodities, seed prices
are up 266 percent, and fuel and fertilizer is up 270 percent.
Efficiency and increased productivity is the key to surviving
in this global market.
According to the United Nations Food and Agricultural
Organization, the world population could rise to 8.2 billion
people in 2030, which will require 50 percent increase in food
production over the next 20 years in order to feed the global
demand. The only way we are going to be able to achieve this
goal is by using high-accuracy GPS, biotechnologies, and proper
management.
Precision agriculture industry has over 400,000 high-
accuracy receivers valued at $13,000 and a replacement cycle of
10 to 15 years, and adds an approximately $19.9 billion per
year of value to the grower. MFA has over 700,000 acres in GPS
nutrient management, $9.5 million--or 9.5 million acres covered
with high-accuracy RTK coverage, and has almost $20 million of
GPS equipment sold to the farmers that will be directly
affected by the implementation of LightSquared's terrestrial
component.
Since 2005, MFA has seen a 600 percent increase in sales
and adoption rate of 40 percent of our customer base. It is
like asking the American population to switch their analogue
TVs to a $13,000 digital TV when LightSquared throws a switch.
LightSquared must not be allowed to broadcast their signal in
the upper and lower bands of the GPS until a feasible and
economic resolution is found.
To conclude, it is the accuracy of GPS that makes the
technology important. Ideally, a solution will be found that
allows GPS and wireless broadband to coexist, but LightSquared
and GPS providers will have to work together. We believe
farmers and ranchers and GPS companies should not have to bear
the additional financial burden in resolving this issue. Thank
you.
[The statement of Mr. Greene follows on page 34.]
Ms. Velazquez. It is my pleasure to introduce to the
Committee Mr. Jeffrey Carlisle. He is executive vice president
for Regulatory Affairs and Public Policy for LightSquared.
Prior to joining LightSquared, Mr. Carlisle served as deputy
chief and, later, chief of the FCC's Wire Line Competition
Bureau where he managed the development of the Commission's
broadband policies. He has over a decade of experience in
telecommunications law. Welcome.
STATEMENT OF JEFF CARLISLE
Mr. Carlisle. Thank you very much. Mr. Chairman, Ranking
Member, members of the Committee, thank you for having me here
today to talk to you about LightSquared and GPS. And one thing
that is very important to understand up front, and my
colleagues on the panel here are going to very clearly make the
case that GPS is important to them, and nobody in my company
doubts that one bit. In fact, GPS is crucial to us. We have to
have a functioning GPS system in order to coordinate the
signals on our network, and the people who bring devices to our
network are all going to have GPS devices, GPS receivers built
into their devices. So no debate about that GPS is important,
it is crucial to the American economy, we use it every day, and
it is important to safety of life.
There is another important issue, though, that is
particularly relevant to this Committee, and that is the fact
that small businesses suffer today from a lack of choice in
their ability to get wireless services. The Committee itself
has recognized this numerous times. LightSquared is building a
network that won't just bring one competitor to the market, but
will bring dozens of competitors to the market. We already have
over 17 business partners who are waiting for us to have our
network ready to go so they can start selling broadband
services to end users. The effectiveness is to enable them to
lower prices to end users and small businesses, the people who
need it most; better connectivity and extension of connectivity
to rural areas which historically have been on the short end of
the stick when it comes to wireless networks, and will
definitely be so when it comes to broadband networks. And this
is a problem that we have to deal with, make no mistake. The
lack of effective broadband infrastructure makes America 15th
in the world in terms of broadband adoption.
And why is this important overall? These consume 24 to 25
times more data than a regular cell phone. That was just 3 to 4
years ago before that started to be the effect. In less than 2
years we will have too many devices and too little spectrum. We
are the only realistic new source of spectrum within that time
frame. And let's be clear: There will always be issues with
existing uses of spectrum when you have a new network being
built. With 700 MHz, which was another band, it was wireless
microphones. With here, it is GPS. With 800 MHz several years
back, it was public safety.
These issues can be solved. If we can't solve them, we
aren't going to be able to provide services to the people who
need them, and the real loser on that will be small businesses.
They are the ones whose bottom line get hit the worst. ``Not in
my backyard'' does not work in spectrum. There is not one piece
of spectrum in the whole range that you can pick that will not
have some sort of incumbent issue.
So how do we solve the issue? I think, unfortunately, a lot
of the commentary that you hear about this conflates our old
proposal of starting in the spectrum closest to GPS with the
proposals we have on the table now, where we will offer our
service on the spectrum farthest away, and this will address
the issue for over 99 percent of GPS devices, simply by
physics. They don't look that far down into our spectrum, and
that covers cellular devices, personal navigation devices, it
covers aviation devices. And to show that effect, the
government testing itself, which was separate from the industry
testing on this, concluded that initial test results
demonstrated that some applications, for example aviation, were
able to operate with little to no degradation when we were
operating on the spectrum farthest away from GPS. That has been
established for months now.
So what are we left with? We are left with precision
devices. So we are going from 400 million devices across the
country to something less than 750,000, perhaps as few as a
hundred thousand. These are the ones that are designed to get
to centimeter-level accuracy and are used in agriculture,
surveying, and construction, and I think there is room for
skepticism in terms of the claims as to how hard this issue is
to solve. For months now, we have heard about there is not
enough room in the devices; it would take a backpack-size
filter to fix it; it would cost too much; it is going to take
too long; it is going to take years and billions of dollars.
Well, I have a precision device right here, actually. It is
from an unnamed manufacturer; we bought it on e-Bay, it is
right there. As you will see when you take the dome off, there
is room in this device, and this is the antenna. This is where
you place the filter for the antenna. It is right here. It is
this little square here. The filter that we have developed in a
matter of days at a cost of $6 per unit is right here.
Now, our solution isn't going to be a solution for every
receiver. Many receiver manufacturers will come up to--will
have to come up with their own solutions. But what this is, is
a proof of three concepts: It can be done; it can be done
inexpensively; and it can be done quickly. I also think the
issue of bearing the cost for this proposal is also something
that is misunderstood.
Just last August in 2010, Garmin issued a voluntary recall
of 1.2 million GPS receivers that had battery issues. Their
stock price declined about a cent the day they announced that.
So this is an issue that comes up in private industry all the
time. Manufacturers who have put devices out there, that are
subject to this kind of interference when they shouldn't be,
should bear some of the responsibility. And we have already
borne a significant amount of the cost of addressing the issue
for hundreds of millions of devices, and I look forward to
receiving your questions. Thank you.
[The statement of Mr. Carlisle follows on page 36.]
Chairman Graves. Thank you, Mr. Carlisle.
Our final witness is Mr. Tim Taylor, the president and CEO
of FreeFlight Systems in Irving, Texas. His company
manufactures aviation GPS navigation systems for commercial and
military aircraft. He has over 35 years of experience in this
industry. Tim is testifying on behalf of the Aircraft
Electronics Association. Welcome and thanks for being here.
STATEMENT OF TIM TAYLOR
Mr. Taylor. Chairman Graves, Ranking Member Velazquez, and
members of the Committee, thank you for the opportunity to
appear before you today to discuss the impact of small business
GPS users in industry of the proposal from LightSquared. My
name is Tim Taylor, and I am president and chief executive
officer----
Chairman Graves. Make sure your mike is on.
Mr. Taylor. Is that better?
Chairman Graves. There you go. That helps.
Mr. Taylor. I am sorry. My name is Tim Taylor, and I am
president and chief executive officer of FreeFlight Systems.
Today I have the privilege of also representing the Aircraft
Electronics Association. The Association represents more than
1,300 aviation businesses worldwide, including avionics
manufacturers, repair stations, distributors, and schools. Of
these, more than 80 percent are small businesses.
My company, FreeFlight Systems, is a manufacturer of
avionics systems for commercial and military aircraft and was
the first company to certify an airborne WAAS receiver.
FreeFlight Systems specializes in NextGen avionics, GPS
navigation systems, GPS/WAAS sensors, dynalink radios, and
radar altimeters. Our entire industry has been working toward
the implementation of GPS-based navigation, air traffic
management, and landing systems for over a decade. This ongoing
transformation of the Nation's airspace system, NextGen, is
predicated upon the availability of ultra high-integrity GPS
position information, which has, in turn, been made possible by
some 30 years of work in GPS technology that lives on the very
fringes of human engineering capability.
All of this development has been accomplished with a
consistent assumption of a certain level of protection of the
GPS signal spectrum, one that long predates any of this recent
debate.
LightSquared has proposed a nationwide wireless broadband
network that pours high-energy radio waves into the previously
protected spectrum. We, like all Americans, support a low-cost
nationwide wireless broadband network, but not one that
compromises the safety and efficiency of the national air
transportation system. Quick studies are being undertaken and
quick decisions are being made. This is entirely incompatible
with the requirements of safe airspace critical system design.
I am reading of voluntary spectrum self-limitation, and I
see reports of instant solutions to interference through the
addition of a filter that was thrown together in the past few
months. This is not how it works for us. The FAA estimates, and
I would agree, no less than 10 to 15 years would be required to
bring an amended product safely to the aviation marketplace,
assuming no further changes to spectrum use.
So my testimony today is not intended to support or deny
the reports that have been submitted regarding the
compatibility of the two systems. The record has more than
enough evidence to draw a conclusion. My intent is to explain
the aviation certification process and extreme cost to small
business that any change to the aviation-certified GPS
navigation and surveillance systems would cause.
GPS satellites are low powered and a long way away. The
signals we receive are less than the noise interference
generated by the metal box we put the receiver in, but people's
lives depend upon our ability to read that information and not
get it wrong any more than once in every 10 to 1,000 million
flight hours. If you have ever been on an aircraft landing in
low-visibility conditions, you will appreciate this level of
integrity, as do those who live close to airports.
To expect the industry to maintain performance requirements
like these in a rapid response mode to a significant noise
environment change is entirely unreasonable. For example, in a
stable requirements environment, we have been developing a
replacement GPS for one of our older products for some 6 years.
We are still about a year away from a certified GPS engine, and
2 to 3 years away from a usable avionics system implementation.
Approval of that system into real aircraft will take another 1
to 2 years.
I can categorically tell you I do not know if the new
system will work in the most optimistic LightSquared plans that
are on the table. I can tell you it will not work at all at
LightSquared's FCC-approved transmission levels and spectrum.
AEA member companies have been manufacturing, selling, and
installing GPS navigators, surveillance, and emergency locator
systems to the aircraft owners and operators for nearly 20
years. These systems have been designed, manufactured, and
certified to the government's technical standards to provide
the aviation consumer with an assurance of usability and
acceptability within the national airspace. Any efforts by
LightSquared to generate a requirement resulting in costly
recertification and retrofits of the already installed systems
will directly and negatively affect the industry and the
Nation's airspace.
In closing, while we support the concept of a low-cost
national wireless broadband system, no system, regardless of
its anticipated benefit, can be allowed to compromise the
safety and security of the national air transportation system.
Changes that affect the national air transportation system
require long-range planning, and we encourage LightSquared or
any other company to participate in the aviation technical
standards development process. RTCA and the FAA have been
working towards NextGen for nearly 20 years. If neighboring
technologies need changes in the aviation systems in order to
be compatible, these companies need to work with the FAA and
RTCA so that the next generation of aviation products might be
designed and certified to be compatible with their future
business plans once the current generation of products reaches
the end of its service life.
The idea that a new entrant into the marketplace can
arbitrarily introduce a new product that immediately
compromises aviation safety and security, while expecting the
aviation industry to design, manufacture, test and certify, and
install an aviation-compliant filter, is simply not realistic.
Thank you for providing me this opportunity to address the
Committee. I will be happy to answer any questions you may
have.
[The statement of Mr. Taylor follows on page 62.]
Chairman Graves. Thank you, Mr. Taylor.
Mr. Carlisle, I have a quick question on your receiver
there you have got, which I have never seen a receiver that big
before, but my question to you is: The filter that you held up,
which you talked about you could fit inside there easily, the
GPS antennas that I have on the aircraft that I fly are the
same size as that filter, maybe just a little bit larger, so
how is that going to fit in that antenna? And that includes the
streamlined casing on it for the slipstream. I am just curious
how that is going to--
Mr. Carlisle. I am glad you asked that question because it
allows an opportunity to really clear this issue up. This is a
precision receiver that gets you down to centimeters for use in
agriculture, surveying, construction. The type of receivers you
are talking about in your plane are not that kind of precision
receiver, all right? Under our proposal, which puts us at the
bottom end of our band, under the minimum performance standards
which are adopted internationally, we should be fine under
that. The FAA is reviewing that. But all the testing of
aviation receivers that was done by both the Federal Government
and by industry shows that the aviation receivers perform much
better than the minimum performance standard. So we are not
talking about, under our current level of proposals, requiring
any changeout--and let me repeat that because it is important--
any changeout of aviation receivers. If it was going to take us
8 to 10 years to go through the certification process in order
to do that, that would not be a commercially feasible business
plan. So what we have proposed is the use of our spectrum that
does not require any changeout of aviation receivers.
Chairman Graves. Well, that brings us--and the problem I
have is, and in your testimony you used the comment ``little to
no degradation.'' The ``little'' is the part that bothers me.
And you said just now in the question, you said ``should be.''
It is the ``should be'' that bothers me because in aviation we
deal in zero tolerances.
Mr. Carlisle. Uh-huh.
Chairman Graves. Zero tolerances. So if there is any
concern out there, we are going to end up having to retrofit
and filter because it is zero tolerance. And what that is going
to cost, you know, and I am very curious as to what--in fact, I
want to hear from all the panel, you know, what we think this
is going to cost in terms of that retrofit, because at least
when it comes to aviation it has to be certified. If it has to
be certified, that is when it gets really expensive.
Mr. Carlisle. I absolutely agree with you, and if I can
directly respond to that, that is absolutely true. And the fact
is that we should only move forward if this can be done while
absolutely assuring safety of life and aviation, all right? And
we are working with the aviation community in order to do that.
That is something that we believe is nonnegotiable, all right?
Nobody in our company is running out to irresponsibly deploy a
network that is going to cause issues with people, with air
safety in the United States. That is not what we are about, and
we are absolutely committed to making sure this will work and
that the FAA is satisfied, that NTIA is satisfied, and FCC is
satisfied on that front. And we have worked with FAA for years.
We have worked with RT--we are members of RT--I am sorry,
pardon me. We have worked with RTCA for years, we have been
members for years on these issues, so we have put a lot of
resources into making sure that happens.
In terms of cost, again, we believe our proposals will take
us in a direction where there will be no cost to aviation in
order to accommodate the network, and that is where we want to
be.
Chairman Graves. How is that no cost, though?
Mr. Carlisle. Because aviation receivers will not have to
be replaced. We are taking all of the cost of solving the issue
on our side, which is over $100 million, by the way.
Chairman Graves. Mr. Taylor.
Mr. Taylor. So, first of all, I would echo your comments on
``little to no.'' We don't live in the world of ``little to
no.'' We live in the world of certainties, as I said, measured
in thousands of millions of parts, very, very, very high
integrity and availability of our systems.
I would also mention that many of the systems out there
were developed back in the 1990s. I mean, there is a lot of
aircraft systems. We as a company, have over 2,000, we know,
systems flying that were developed in the 1990s. The
requirements for noise interference testing on those was
significantly less than the requirements levied on the modern
receivers, so they certainly would have to be addressed, and I
have no idea how they would work in this noise environment. No
one has yet tested one.
For the newer receivers, as we said, there is a very strict
FAA requirement for noise. As I understand it, the proposal for
LightSquared to use the lowest spectrum comes very, very close
to the edge of that or crosses slightly that current noise
requirement, and the concept that we are going to be okay
because there is some margin in there, again, does not work for
me. This is something that needs to be tested and evaluated,
and it is not one field test, it is a very serious
comprehensive series of regressive testing that will take a
long, long time to accomplish.
Chairman Graves. Mr. Boykin.
Mr. Boykin. I don't know what the cost is. I will go back
to testing, though, and it sounds--it all sounds good. But back
to the ``Show Me'' concept, I will take you back to 1981 at a
field in Arizona where a client of mine, when I worked for
Motorola, was complaining about interference. I couldn't figure
out why he couldn't talk to that repeater on the mountaintop 60
miles away. You could almost see the mountain, but he couldn't
talk to it with his 15-watt radio. Drove 2 miles back to
Interstate 19 and found a crew from a large construction
company that was operating in the 27 MHz band and asked them to
key their radios every minute, drove back to my client's site
and said, okay, let's try doing it now, and that is exactly
what it was. My client was using a radio in the 450 MHz FM band
for business. That is 400 MHz and 2 miles away, and that amount
of electrical energy in the air interfered with a 60-mile
transmission.
I note from the chart Mr. Carlisle brings in that we are
talking about a spectrum spread of 30 MHz between ground-based
transmitters that I have to fly over. So I will just go back to
the point, Mr. Chairman, that I spent over $2,000 a receiver to
do my WAAS upgrade a few years ago. We are talking thousands of
dollars for upgrades, if necessary. Let's get back to the
testing. That is what really needs to get done.
Chairman Graves. Mr. Greene.
Mr. Greene. Well, I will concur with the two gentlemen,
Boykin on my left and Taylor on the end, with the fact that we
need to have a lot more testing done on this just to make sure
we don't go through and interfere. Being in the agriculture
industry, I do go ahead, I do recognize that receiver, and that
receiver is a lot of the same type of size that we have for our
high-accuracy RTK.
Now, I went through and actually crunched some numbers. MFA
has approximately 250 high-accuracy GPS units across the State,
and we cover approximately 1 million acres with those high-
accuracy RTK antennas. Assuming that LightSquared's filter is
going to cost around $800, to go and retrofit or basically to
purchase those filters is going to cost roughly $200,000, and
$200,000 for the filters and approximately $200,000 for the
resource. The resource is the personnel, the truck, the fuel
expenses to go around and take care of that. Time frame in that
period, will take at least 1 year's worth of time in order to
go through and do that, and that is just for the 250 high-
accuracy receivers that we have.
Now, if you go ahead and you take a look at it, Mr.
Carlisle said that there could be anywhere between 100,000 and
750,000 high-accuracy RTK antennas. Our belief is that there is
at least 750,000 to 1 million high-accuracy RTK receivers used
in agriculture, used in construction, used in geography
management. So you go and take those kind of numbers and you go
and times it, basically it comes out to $1,600 per unit that it
will cost in order to go through and retrofit it with this
filter, go and take it times that $1 million--or, excuse me, 1
million high-accuracy RTK GPSs that are out there in the
marketplace.
Mr. Carlisle. May I respond on the accuracy? The numbers I
actually used were that the universe of devices could be about
750,000 in the country. It is not entirely known exactly. It
could be as high as a million. But in terms of the ones that
actually have to be replaced or retrofitted, it is not going to
be that entire universe. First of all, because a significant
number of precision devices have already tested out in terms of
being resilient, so that is 10 out of 38, or almost 25 percent.
Second, many of these receivers are going to be used in
areas which are going to be far away from anywhere our network
is going to be, and, third, our--this is not a flash cut. We
are going to be deploying our network over a period of 5 years.
There will be a certain amount of exchange of devices that
would take place in the ordinary course of business anyway. So
that is how you get down to the 100,000 to maybe 200,000 number
that you have to focus on and actually change out. Just to
correct the record.
Chairman Graves. I don't want to dominate the questions
because we have got a lot of members here with questions, and I
will save the rest of mine for the end of the hearing. But I do
have one quick one for you, Mr. Carlisle, because the test
results have revealed some significant interference in that
upper 10 MHz band, and so you have proposed launching in the
lower 10 for your service. My question to you is: Will you guys
never use that upper 10----
Mr. Carlisle. Well, we will certainly use----
Chairman Graves [continuing]. Of GPS?
Mr. Carlisle [continuing]. Continue to use it for satellite
services. We have used it there for 15 years without any issue
at all with GPS, and those satellite services provide services
to public safety, oil and gas, all sorts of folks in the United
States uses it. Our satellite services were used after
Hurricane Katrina. After the tornadoes in Joplin, first
responders had our units there. So we will continue to use the
spectrum.
We would like a continued dialogue as to whether or not we
could ever commercially deploy that spectrum because then you
do start to get into the issues that Mr. Taylor and Mr. Boykin
have raised about aviation functions and the susceptibility of
a larger number of GPS receivers, simply because more of them
look into that spectrum. So you would need a longer
conversation about that, but we are open to having that
discussion, open to talking about alternatives.
Chairman Graves. But right now, I mean, basically you are
not using that upper bandwidth, you are just basically doing
that, that is just the company has decided not to do it, there
is no requirement for that, you could use it at any time?
Mr. Carlisle. We would--let me be clear. The only issue
that comes up down the road is if, you know, we deploy out in
our network using the 10 MHz all the way down on the other end
of the band. We can do our full deployment to 260 million
people with that amount of spectrum. The issue is the number of
devices, the amount of usage that ultimately goes on the
network.
That won't be a problem we have for at least 5 to 6 years.
And in the meantime, you can either--you can skin that cat a
lot of different ways. You can modify the way you are using
your current spectrum, you can use the new spectrum in ways
that are very different, much lower powers that would not raise
an issue on interference. You could also look at swapping for
alternative spectrum or something like that. There are a whole
bunch of things that should be looked at before we--while we
move forward on the lower 10, but--and also keep in mind our
customers are retailers. They will have options in the
marketplace, too. By that time other spectrum may very well
have been brought online, and if they need more spectrum for
their customers, they can go out and buy it from somebody else.
So I think there are a lot of different ways to skin that cat
down the road, and we are willing to talk with the government
agencies and the GPS manufacturers about how we do that.
Chairman Graves. I am worried about the future and this
betting on the outcome that something is going to happen in the
time frame between now and then. That worries me a great deal,
that it isn't going to happen. I am going to yield to Ranking
Member Velazquez.
Ms. Velazquez. Thank you. Mr. Carlisle, if filtering
technology is the solution to interference, are you aware of
how much it will cost small firms because, after all, this is
the Small Business Committee, and we are here because we
understand that it could have a negative impact on small
businesses. And I would like to know if--it is important for
all of us to recognize that it is not just the cost of
retrofitting but also if you took into account indirect costs,
such as time and lost resources or use of equipment, if those
were included in your calculation.
Mr. Carlisle. Okay. Well, that is a very good question, and
thank you for asking it because I think it highlights an
important point there, in that filtering is not the only
solution. Filtering is the solution for high-precision
receivers, okay? For the vast number of small businesses who
day-to-day only use consumer-level devices that aren't
precision, moving down to the spectrum and lowering our power
is going to address the issue for them.
Now, for those small businesses who do use precision
equipment, our very strongly held belief is it shouldn't cost
them a cent. It shouldn't cost them a cent. We will be
deploying our network in a way that they will have advanced
notice of when--of where we will be and when we will be there.
There will be time for them to work with their manufacturers to
get alternatives, and the manufacturers really should be
stepping forward on this. I don't think there is any question
about that.
Mr. Taylor in his testimony, has, you know, made statements
that this was all of a sudden came up and wasn't anticipated,
that our power levels were all of a sudden jumped up. We are
operating at transmission levels, power levels that were
approved in 2005. There have been years to address this issue.
Ms. Velazquez. Okay. Thank you. Mr. Taylor, the DOD's 2008
GPS standard encouraged filters for GPS devices. Can you please
explain how exactly these filters minimize interference and
whether you currently use these filters in your GPS devices?
Mr. Taylor. First of all, we do not make much in the way of
military GPS. We do a small amount of military GPS, so I cannot
specifically address that question. From a more general
aviation receiver point of view, we would be happy to look at
filtering as a possible means of mitigating the risk associated
with the spectrum challenges we are talking about.
GPS is different from telecommunications. The way GPS
works, the signal--I will not get technical, I promise. The
signal is a broadband spread-out signal. We need, in order to
reliably discriminate the information, we need to be able to
see a broadband signal, so filtering limits that, and it will--
filtering will impact the performance of our receivers. I can't
tell you today to what extent.
Ms. Velazquez. Okay. Mr. Carlisle, I understand the updated
plan includes a design to eventually expand operations to the
entire spectrum band, yet no details have been provided. Does
the company have a timetable for this expansion and how will
this affect GPS?
Mr. Carlisle. We won't need additional capacity, as I said
earlier, for at least 5 to 6 years, and so I think that is the
outside timetable. And as I said, there are many alternatives
that we would want to consider to see what was commercially
reasonable and safe.
Ms. Velazquez. Your company believes that its plan can
increase coverage to at least 260 million people by the end of
2015. In light of our current economic conditions, what role do
you see your company's expanded wireless broadband network
playing in job creation?
Mr. Carlisle. I think it will play a significant role in
it. Our invest--to build that network, you have to plow $9
billion into the American economy. We have already spent a
billion dollars in American technology to put our satellites
up. That was with Boeing in Washington State and Harris in
Florida. In order to achieve a network build like this, you
have to spend a tremendous amount of money all across the
country. Wherever you put a tower up, that is folks from your
vendors, that is contractors, that is small business people
providing that service, and then it is contractors and small
business people providing the maintenance going forward. So we
have estimated very conservatively that the impact of our
investment on the American economy is 15,000 jobs supported a
year for each of the 5 years of the build-out. Following that,
each one of our business partners, because they don't have to
spend money on owning and maintaining their own network, can
plow that money into their own retail operations and hire jobs
there.
Ms. Velazquez. Okay. My question to the other three
witnesses, the FCC believes that LightSquared's proposed
network is going to benefit and have a positive impact on
broadband access for rural small businesses, but we also know
that existing GPS technology will be harmed. So my question to
the three witnesses is, how do you recommend that we proceed
going forward? Should an innovative idea be outright rejected
without any real attempts to find a technical solution? Mr.
Boykin?
Mr. Boykin. Thank you, ma'am. And obviously we don't want
to withhold any technology. Technology has led our economy. I
will go back to--I am starting to sound like a broken record
here. We need to do some testing. Things aren't always as they
appear to be in the RF spectrum, and I will point back to the
fact that the original test had one base station. I pointed out
earlier, I used to work for Motorola. Motorola was not only the
company that designed land mobile radio in the beginning,
Motorola is the company that invented cellular technology with
the 800 MHz system Mr. Carlisle referred to. Those experiences
at Motorola taught me that when you get two or more radios in
close proximity, things get different, and you will note that
some of these tests were done with one radio in an anechoic
chamber, a noise-free chamber. We need to put a couple of base
stations out there, a couple of handsets, and I will offer up
my airplane, if somebody wants to chip in for the gas. I would
be happy to fly out to New Mexico, it is a beautiful State, and
fly over and make sure that this thing actually works.
Ms. Velazquez. Mr. Greene.
Mr. Greene. Thank you. I concur with the rest of the group
that the fact that we need to do some additional testing. And
being a Cubs fan, and knowing that their spring training
happens out in springtime out in Arizona, I would be happy to
go out there and help out in any possible way that I can.
However, definitely some more testing needs to be made. We
feel like broadband Internet will bring an exceptional increase
to our business perspective as well, but if we don't have--if
we don't have the GPS to collect the data, there will be no
data to transfer into in order to do more processing.
Mr. Taylor. Again, we all agree that we need more broadband
services in the country, no doubt, but from the aviation
community's point of view it has taken decades, decades of a
complicated interaction between receivers, GPS constellation,
ground infrastructure, to come with something that is robust
enough to be safe, the safety of life for people to fly safely.
And one or two flight tests will be fun, but it will not answer
the question, and I cannot tell you there is a fast answer for
this. I think it is going to take time and analysis and
interaction. I cannot see any other answer, I am afraid.
Ms. Velazquez. Mr. Carlisle, what is wrong with testing?
Mr. Carlisle. There is nothing wrong with testing, and in
fact we are fully supportive of the further testing that NTIA
asked for, but I am not sure the background materials Mr.
Taylor has read--but frankly, there has been a more
comprehensive testing of this issue than any other interference
issue ever presented to the GP--to the FCC. There were 130
devices tested in eight independent labs over a series of
months by an industry group that had 37 of the Nation's top GPS
engineers on it. That was just the industry testing. There were
dozens of devices tested in New Mexico at Holloman Air Force
Base by the U.S. Air Force. Furthermore, there were devices
tested by the FAA and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Moreover,
RTCA, their GPS group ran an analysis of the minimum
performance standards against our signal, and that analysis is
continuing to be done by FAA. So we have no issue with there
being further testing to make sure we are absolutely safe on
safety of life, but let's not ignore the fact, there has been
an awful lot of testing already and analysis.
Ms. Velazquez. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Graves. Mr. Schilling.
Mr. Schilling. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Just quickly, a
couple of things. I guess I will go to Mr. Carlisle. If the
retrofit replacement of the GPS receivers in the market, if you
have to do a retrofit, will you guys be paying for that or will
that be the person that is having the retrofit done, say a
farmer, for example?
Mr. Carlisle. That is a very important question, because
for 9 months what the GPS manufacturers have done is they have
said there is only two parties in this debate. There is the
LightSquared network and there are the users of GPS who are
going to be affected by it. They have conveniently left
themselves out of the equation.
Again, I don't think the users should have to pay a cent.
We have already paid, and the total value of our commitments is
over $160 million at this point to solve the problem for the
vast majority of consumer devices. For these precision devices,
where there really is no solution that we can put on our
transmissions except to abandon the band entirely, we think
given we are talking about 100- to 200,000 devices, maybe a few
more than that, but that is the order of magnitude we are
talking about, and that our power levels have been set for 6
years, that that is the right outcome there.
Mr. Schilling. Okay, very good. Thank you. Now I want to go
to Rick Greene. A couple--I come from a large agricultural
area. One of the things, have you guys done any looks at maybe
like if things do need to be switched around, how long a
tractor will have to be down, you know, how that will affect
like a single tractor versus a large family farm?
Mr. Greene. I haven't put any numbers per se, but one of
the things with agriculture, it is very time sensitive, and it
is one of those things where if we can't get to everybody by
springtime, then a producer could go and have the option--well,
I have got--a producer could go and see a projected downtime
of--well, let me just give you an example.
So in the State of Missouri we have 1 million acres
underneath high-accuracy RTK coverage, okay? If you go and look
at 180 bushels per acre times $7 corn, say for instance those
acres don't go through and get planted, that will be $1.26
billion that the producers will have lost that year, just for
our 1 million acres that we have in the State of Missouri.
Mr. Schilling. Okay, that is a lot of corn. Okay, very
good. That is all the questions I have. I yield back my time,
Chairman.
Chairman Graves. Mr. West.
Mr. West. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and Ranking Member. My
question, Mr. Carlisle, and I guess I will take it into a
little bit different direction. You are talking about
developing this out in rural communities, correct? I am very
concerned, because when you start to look at a lot of military
type of activity, military activity out around a lot of rural
communities like NTC, National Training Center, Twentynine
Palms, China Lake, impact areas and this type of thing, my
question is: What type of testing, and what is your
implementation plan? What have you done to work with the
Department of Defense as far as aircraft, you know,
helicopters, fixed wing, laser designating devices and, as
well, as smart munitions, because I think it would be a bad day
for small businesses and communities if that spectrum were to
somehow interfere with a training exercise and all of a sudden
a smart munition ends up somewhere where it is not supposed to
be.
Mr. Carlisle. Thank you for your question. We have actually
been working with DOD since 2008 to coordinate the use of our
spectrum, and with the OASD and NII group within the Pentagon,
and in terms of the more recent identified issue with GPS
receivers, which was really only brought up in September of
2010, we have had extensive exchanges with U.S. Space Command
about the use of GPS within the U.S. military, also with
Northern Command.
General Shelton's testimony before the House Armed Services
Committee a few weeks ago quite accurately outlined the fact
that, well, you know, you have got to train the way you are
going to fight, and so we have to be using the same equipment
here as we are using over there. The fact is that we know where
the training facilities are. We know where the proving grounds
are. Today we operate under a very significant requirement to
limit our power near air fields and near navigable waterways.
It limits our power significantly in order to avoid any
interference with aircraft or maritime receivers in our band.
You can extend those operating limits to base stations we
might put near military bases in order to avoid that
interference, because you know where the activity is going on.
That is one thing you can do. There are other options.
Mr. West. Well, then my question is: Have we actually put
some of these towers out there and run some tests on this
with--across the spectrum with different types of aircraft and
munitions to make sure that we are certified?
Mr. Carlisle. The U.S. Air Force ran a classified testing
of military receivers in New Mexico in April of this last year.
Those results are classified. Our cleared consultants have not
seen them, but we would assume they have run that testing.
Now, they ran it under our old business plan which was to
start closest to GPS, and that is part of the reason there was
a reason for further testing now, was to make sure that the
lower 10 option works for those.
Mr. West. And for the rest of the panel, I guess the
question is when was the first time that you all really heard
about this impact or potential interference on the GPS system?
This kind of like surprised us, that we should just be
restrained to birthdays?
Mr. Boykin. Well, I am not sure about birthdays Congressman
West, but I can tell you that like a lot of issues that come up
in public policy, we had a land development issue next to our
airport that we learned about by reading about it in the
Washington Business Journal. We learned about this by reading
about it in the newspaper.
I understand that the most recent application to the FCC
over the Thanksgiving weekend last year, literally was over the
Thanksgiving weekend, and the public notice came out with a 10-
day turnover, the Thanksgiving holiday, which having done a lot
of business with the Federal Government I find pretty speedy.
But our first indication of this was strictly out in the public
area--arena.
Mr. Greene. Same thing here. We basically first heard about
it in the public arena probably in the March or April time
frame. And then from there, it was quite simply kind of
watching the news to see as this thing progresses.
Mr. Taylor. Same answer, I am afraid. It has been less than
a year, and just been trying to keep up with it as reports
appear in the press. We have more recently been contacted by
the FAA and by the military to provide receivers for testing.
So we became involved in that way, but quite recently.
Mr. Carlisle. May I say when we first learned it? I will be
very quick. We first learned of it in September of 2010 when
the GPS manufacturers brought it to the attention of the FCC.
We have actually have been working GPS interference issues with
the GPS community since 2002 when we reached an agreement with
them to limit our emissions into their band. So we have a cliff
on our spectrum, there are filters in our transmitters that
stop our signal from leaking into GPS.
The issue that was--and there was no problem with that
agreement for 8 years. There is still no problem with that
agreement. All the equipment tested out the way it should. The
issue that was raised in September 2010, much to our surprise
as well as everybody else's here, was that the GPS receivers
look well into our band. So it doesn't really matter if we are
limiting our signal if we are operating within our band within
our authorized frequencies. They are looking at it and can be
overloaded. So that is when we learned of it and we have been
dealing with it since then, too.
Mr. West. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.
Chairman Graves. Ms. Herrera Beutler. Mr. Hanna.
Mr. Hanna. What will it cost to retrofit--not retrofit, but
for new devices, devices not thought of or built yet to
accommodate your bandwidth?
Mr. Carlisle. It depends on the device. If you are talking
about cellular phones where you have got millions of these
devices and you can build at a very high level of volume, you
are talking about filters that cost less than a nickel that
exist today that can go into this.
I think there was some ambiguity, or nobody really knew how
expensive it would be to develop a filter for precision
devices, which are really the hardest ones to deal with. Well,
we now know you can deal with precision receivers that are on
the market today and also sold to government agencies and
surveyors, and all sorts of people use them, for $6. So going
forward, this is a very small incremental cost to deal with it.
Mr. Hanna. And you estimate that you will be able to
provide Internet service to another 50 billion people in rural
communities?
Mr. Carlisle. Is that on top of the 260 million that we are
required to?
Mr. Hanna. Yes.
Mr. Carlisle. Absolutely. We have already struck deals with
several rural companies that we have the potential to go
outside of our footprint. That is Cellular South, SI Wireless
in southern Illinois. And just today we announced a deal with a
company that plans to deploy in towns down to 10,000 people or
less, that will reach out to areas that have been historically
underserved. We may not have a regulatory requirement to serve
above those 260 million people, but it is good business to do
it and we should be doing it.
Mr. Hanna. And have you done studies on the potential
growth from that, economic growth?
Mr. Carlisle. I know there are studies out there that
indicate broadband infrastructure investment is one of the
majority determinants of economic growth. I grew up in a rural
neighborhood that--where we had electromechanical switches
until the 1980s in California. And I will tell you, the one
thing that keeps people in rural communities is if they feel
they have got economic opportunity there. They are not going to
have that economic opportunity if you don't have the highway
going out there. Same thing is they are not going to have that
economic opportunity if you don't have the broadband
infrastructure there today. It is just not going to happen.
Leave aside issues like public safety, provision of medical
services, and education.
Mr. Hanna. Thank you, I yield back.
Chairman Graves. Mr. Tipton.
Mr. Tipton. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Carlisle, I would
like to go back to one of your comments. You talked about the
filters stopping leaking as you described it.
Mr. Carlisle. Uh-huh.
Mr. Tipton. Is that 100 percent? With the filters there is
not going to be a problem?
Mr. Carlisle. Yes, sir. That was confirmed in both the
industry tests and the government testing. Both confirmed that
our filters are doing exactly what they are supposed to be
doing. They actually filter our signal down to a level that is
a thousand times stricter than what the FCC requires for us.
And that was a level, by the way, that the GPS industry put in
2002 and asked us to agree to. So that is what we agreed to.
Mr. Tipton. Okay. Great. I come from rural Colorado, and
obviously support a lot of broadband being moved out into rural
America. But we have a lot of problems right now, particularly
for our small businesses that are struggling in terms of a lot
of the costs. None more so, probably, than a lot of our farmers
and other GPS users who are already struggling right now in our
economy.
The U.S. Census Bureau estimates that about 50 million
people live in these rural areas. How many of these 50 million
citizens that are in rural America right now would receive new
broadband service? And additionally, can you tell us how many
would be covered by LightSquared if you move forward with your
operations?
Mr. Carlisle. In terms of wireless service, they will get
it the day we turn on and get our next-generation units out
there. Remember, we have a satellite that covers 100 percent of
the United States to 200 nautical miles offshore. And it
reaches these devices. That is why we spent a billion dollars
on it. We spent $250 million of that billion inventing
technology that had never been built before. So the day we are
out there----
Mr. Tipton. Is that satellite, is that just a receiver that
then transmits? Is the technology on the ground?
Mr. Carlisle. Yes, it is a pipe. So you can put basically
any kind of signal you need over it.
And so that will operate at speeds that are approximate to
what you get on 3G today. So you can do phone calls, emails,
texts on it today.
Now, when we roll out--now, the rollout of our 4G network,
that is going to depend on the business deals we do and the
opportunity out there. But I will say that we have had a
significant amount of interest from rural wireless companies
who don't see an alternative to being able to build out. On
this issue, there was a 700 MHz for rural development that was
put out there. And unfortunately, those carriers can't get
enough of the volume to be able to attract the chip companies
and the handset manufacturers to put those frequencies on their
devices.
So it has been very difficult for them to actually have an
independent way of moving forward. And that is why entities
like the Rural Cellular Association support LightSquared.
Mr. Tipton. And I think that is an important point because
it does get down to some economics. In your statement you
claimed that the revised implementation plan will solve
interference for 99.5 percent of GPS receivers. And making the
assumption--this is obviously a big assumption--that your
figures are completely accurate, I understand that .5 percent
of the receivers you admit are affected by high-precision
receivers used in agriculture, construction, and surveying.
You stated today in your testimony that this .5 percent
figure is actually 750,000 to, I believe, a million units. That
is a lot of Americans that are going to potentially be
negatively impacted by this implementation. How are we going to
deal with that?
Mr. Carlisle. To be clear about the number, I think 99.5
percent is probably a liberal estimate of it. Actually, if you
take the worst-case scenario of only 400 million devices in the
universe, which seems to be the minimum that we have seen as a
estimate, and 1 million precision devices being out there,
which is the largest number we have ever seen estimated, it is
.25 of a percent. So really the number should be 99.75 percent.
But in terms of how we fix that, there are three factors
which indicate that the full universe is not going to need to
be replaced. First, a significant number of precision devices
use different types of technology. Some use satellite
technology to achieve high levels of precision. Some, like RTK,
use terrestrial technology. So when you test these out you see
different results. And about 10 out of 38 were fine. Now, the
majority won't be. By fine, I mean they didn't suffer harmful
interference under the strictest definition of ``harmful
interference'' used by the GPS manufacturers.
So not all of them are going to be affected. Not all of
them are going to be used in close proximity to where we will
be operating. Even in rural communities where we are deploying,
we may only have the ground network in the denser areas rather
than in the far fields, far away.
And then third, it is not a flash cut. We will be deploying
over 5 years and we will have an unprecedented level of
transparency as to where we are going to be and when we are
going to be there. So people will know well in advance. And a
certain number of these devices are going to change out in the
ordinary course of business anyway.
So in terms of the cost, I think you start getting that
portion, if you assume it is 750,000 or a million, is it
300,000 devices, is it 200,000, is it 100,000? We have seen
that estimate from some GPS manufacturers. I don't know, but it
is not going to be the full universe. And we believe that cost
is appropriately borne by the manufacturers.
Mr. Tipton I yield back, Mr. Chairman. Thank you.
Chairman Graves. Mr. Mulvaney has no questions?
Mr. Mulvaney. No.
Chairman Graves. Let the record show that is a first time.
Mr. King?
Mr. King. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate you holding
this hearing. It is something that needed to be and still needs
to be aired out. And I find myself in one of those conflicting
pieces of real estate that is very much impacted by the GPS
guidance of our farm equipment and also can use a little more
broadband.
But I wanted to direct my first question to Mr. Greene, and
that is the impact on precision farm equipment, GPS guidance.
And as that was developed, I don't know how many years ago we
are talking about, perhaps 10 years or so ago as it was put in
place, do you have knowledge of any efforts that were made to
look at the spectrum then? And do you have the basis by which
the decisions were made to build out the ag guidance technology
on that spectrum?
Mr. Greene. Yes, I would be happy to address that issue.
The agricultural industry looked at that kind of spectrum back
in the, oh, I believe it was around the late nineties, early
2000s area. And one of the things I have gotten from several
manufacturers of GPS is that they were actually asked to have
their spectrum in that area be movable, if you will. So if the
company called Sky Terra at the time would like to go and
change the OmniSTAR megahertz signal that it was operating it
on, the company could go and move it from one side of the
spectrum to the other side of the spectrum.
Mr. King. And your perspective on this is that the spectrum
that has been purchased by LightSquared, you disagree, I think,
to where the overlap might be? Is that a fair characterization?
Mr. Greene. Yes, that is correct.
Mr. King. And if a decision were made then on where that
bright line might be, rather than where that gray line might
be, how would you respond to this? And that would be if a
company or an entity purchases spectrum that they have a
complete and full legal right to that spectrum aside from the
definition of where that bright line versus gray line might be?
Would you agree with that? Mr. Greene.
Mr. Greene. Yes.
Mr. King. Thank you. And then, so if there is to be
mitigation of this problem that I sure hope does get resolved--
and the testimony that has been here and the dialogue about the
filter that at least presumably can resolve this, what is your
position on which side of this spectrum should pay for that
technology? Which side of this argument should pay for that
technology?
Mr. Greene. You know, there is an old interference phrase
that goes across the regular wireless network: First come,
first served. And basically when you go and put a new frequency
up on a tower, if your frequency interferes with somebody else,
then you have to go ahead and remove your equipment or find an
alternative way in order to resolve the issue.
Mr. King. Provided that you own that spectrum, as you said
earlier?
Mr. Greene. Yes, correct.
Mr. King. And aside from that, even with that argument,
let's just say that some entity has the authority to make this
decision clearly and they draw a bright line, and that bright
line is someplace along the line with some of this GPS
equipment that I want to keep operating, I want to solve this
problem in the worst way, if that finds itself on a spectrum
that is clearly and legally determined to be LightSquared's
then you would say from a legal perspective it is up to then
the ag industry to take care of the cost of the filtration?
Mr. Greene. Well, I would say there is no clear-cut line on
this. Like the other couple of gentlemen were saying, that
frequencies have a tendency to go and bleed together. And
testing out that interference and checking to see what is
available is what the real key it.
Mr. King. You would say you would apply the first come,
first served to that area?
Mr. Greene. That is correct.
Mr. King. I am running out of time and I don't want to
spend it all focused on you, Mr. Greene, but I appreciate that.
I want to turn to Mr. Carlisle who has listened to all of
this dialogue, and ask the 180-degree opposite of these
questions. If the shoe is on the other foot and it is
determined in a clear way that the GPS people are there with a
spectrum that they have a claim to, whether it is a gray area
or a bleedover or first-come, first-served, who then would you
say should pay for the filtration? And I think you testified--I
am going to guess this--that this problem can technologically
be solved. Doesn't it sort down then to who writes the check to
solve it?
Mr. Carlisle. That is exactly right. And I would say if
this were a case of our transmitter bleeding across to the GPS
spectrum, into the spectrum that they are using that is Federal
Government spectrum, by the way, that is used by the GPS
manufacturers at no cost, if we are bleeding over there, then
that would be our responsibility to solve. And we spent $9
million developing the filters to solve that. There is a chart
at the back of my testimony that shows this.
If the question, though, is then are their receivers
looking into our band, there is no principle of first come,
first served recognized in the law. Certainly not in FCC
regulations. FCC allows you to build any kind of receiver you
want, but you have to take the risk if you are looking outside
your band and if you have the effect of blocking authorized
services, then you have no claim to protection. And by the way,
this is recognized in the user manuals of many GPS devices.
I have got an excerpt here from a Garmin G900X integrated
cockpit GPS navigation device manual which says: This device
complies with part 15 of the FCC rules--the rule I just
mentioned. Operations subject to the following two conditions:
Device may not cause harmful interference and this device must
accept any interference received, including interference that
may cause undesired operation.
Mr. King. I appreciate that acknowledgement. I would just
conclude with this question: Is either side of this argument
looking to the taxpayers to pay the difference?
Mr. Carlisle. Absolutely not.
Mr. Greene. No.
Mr. King. I appreciate that. Mr. Chairman, thank you. I
yield back.
Chairman Graves. Mr. Carlisle, as far as the testing goes,
you guys have tested your upper bandwidth but you are still in
the process of testing the lower bandwidth; correct? Those
results are not in yet?
Mr. Carlisle. To be clear, the technical working group
testing, which was the industry testing for all classes of
devices, the lower 10 was tested. So we have a full set of data
for all 130 devices. The further testing that needed to be done
was for classified receivers that were not tested on the lower
10 in the independent government testing, and some additional
validation testing as NTIA set out in its letter a couple of
weeks ago.
Chairman Graves. My next question--Mr. Taylor and Carlisle,
you can comment too--you talk a lot about over the course of
the next 5 or 6 years there is going to be normal changeout of
devices, but in the aviation community because they are so
expensive, because of certification issues out there, there is
still a lot of older devices out there that are working--
working very well, and we hope work well into the future.
But Mr. Taylor, can you comment on those? You know the ones
I am talking about. The ones that came out in the nineties--
late nineties, early 2000s.
Mr. Taylor. Yes. Yes, sir. Normal service life for
commercial aviation equipment, minimum is 15 years; we are
required to support equipment for 15 years. Often it lasts much
longer than that. As you said, it is incredibly expensive to
make a change to an aircraft, to change a critical system like
a GPS. The larger the aircraft, the more complex the change.
Those systems that predate this entire discussion are in
the field in thousands. And I know thousands is not a big
number compared to the numbers we are hearing in terms of
equipments fielded here. But this is thousands that you care
about. It is airplanes that you fly on every day. Many of them
have equipment that was developed long before this debate
started and to which no one knows the answers. I don't know the
answer. I build it; I don't know the answer to its
susceptibility. And that equipment will in normal course of
business be in service for at least another 5 years, some of
the older equipment. Some of it for much longer than that. It
lasts for a long time and stays in service.
On the spectrum, I just wanted to clarify something on the
spectrum. The RTCAs as you said, the RTCA preliminary report,
which is a quick report, said that if LightSquared stays at the
lower 50 MHz of the lower spectrum, lower half of the lower
spectrum at very reduced power, you just impinge or don't
impinge on the standards to which new equipment is developed.
Brand new equipment. If you go to the next 5 MHz of the lower
band, its acquisition is affected, tracking might be affected.
You go to the upper band, then acquisition and tracking is
affected.
RTCA said that of the full spectrum, there would be no GPS
aviation service over the entire eastern United States and
close to any major city where this system is operating. Today I
heard for the first time again the lower 10 MHz is now the one
that is contemplated. If the lower 10 MHz is used at even the
reduced powers that we are discussing, RTCA says--I say--you
will have problems with aviation GPS receivers, even the newest
ones that are in service today. And who knows what the story is
with the older ones?
Mr. Carlisle. I would like to correct the record on a
couple of things. First of all, on what RTCA found. What it
found was that the lower 5 was cleared and that the next 5 MHz
for tracking was likely fine, but there could be issues with
acquisition, and further analysis was necessary. And the FAA is
undertaking that further analysis.
The RTCA report did say if we were using our upper 10
megahertz then, that could impact aviation. But unfortunately,
this issue continues to be conflated into our new proposals to
move down to the lower 10 at the power levels we were
authorized to do in 2005.
The other point I would mention is on the aviation
receivers and whether the older ones are better than the newer
ones. One thing we found through the testing process is months
and months and months ago, when we were at the very beginning
of this, I think we like other people just assumed, well, this
has got to be old GPS receivers. It is old technology.
Certainly the newer technology is better.
Well, what we found out was that wasn't actually the case.
Older technology actually is in some cases less susceptible to
this kind of interference because it is not as wide open. The
GPS industry has moved further and further into more and more
precise equipment which requires you to pick up more GPS energy
and requires them to look further and further into our band.
And I am happy to get further follow-up information on this
to make sure I am recalling correctly, but my understanding is
the older RTCA standards which predated the currently
applicable ones are actually less open and will have less wide
open receivers than the ones that are currently authorized
under the current standard. And that is the one that is being
analyzed today. But I will provide follow-up information on
that to make sure that is correct.
Chairman Graves. Mr. Boykin, did you have a comment?
Mr. Boykin. Far be it for me to spoil a really good party,
but in fact I am following along with the RTCA paper and Mr.
Carlisle is exactly accurate in his comments about that. But
what it points out there is that there is a small margin for
error. That same paper points out that traditionally, GPS being
an aviation safety service, the analysis includes a six-decibel
safety margin as standard practice.
I am starting to see numbers here that are getting very
small and very small safety margin. So my comment to that would
be back to the same comment that we started with: A significant
amount of testing that still needs to be done. And as my
colleague from the GPS manufacturer said, that isn't going to
be taken lightly and isn't going to be done tomorrow.
Chairman Graves. Mr. Greene, I will give you the last word.
Mr. Greene. Well, we all know how much wireless Internet to
rural areas as well as GPS is to the rest of the country, and
how much of an economic impact. And like to go and follow
everybody else and say that, you know what, more testing does
need to be done, and I hope we don't jump into a situation that
gets everybody in trouble in the end.
Chairman Graves. I thank you all for participating today.
The Committee is going to very closely follow the action of the
FCC in the LightSquared proposal and I plan to send a letter to
the FCC reinforcing the need for comprehensive tests of all
types of devices to ensure that there isn't going to be any
interference for small business GPS users.
With that, I would ask unanimous consent that all members
have 5 legislative days to submit statements and supporting
materials for the record. Seeing no objection, it is so
ordered.
[The information follows:]
Chairman Graves. And with that, the hearing is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 2:30 p.m., the Committee was adjourned.]
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T1500A.001
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T1500A.002
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T1500A.003
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T1500A.004
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T1500A.005
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T1500A.006
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T1500A.007
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T1500A.008
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T1500A.009
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T1500A.010
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T1500A.011
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T1500A.012
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T1500A.013
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T1500A.014
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T1500A.015
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T1500A.016
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T1500A.017
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T1500A.018
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T1500A.019
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T1500A.020
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T1500A.021
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T1500A.022
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T1500A.023
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T1500A.024
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T1500A.025
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T1500A.026
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T1500A.027
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T1500A.028
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T1500A.029
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T1500A.030
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T1500A.031
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T1500A.032
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T1500A.033
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T1500A.034
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T1500A.035
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T1500A.036
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T1500A.037
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T1500A.038
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T1500A.039
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T1500A.040
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T1500A.041
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T1500A.042
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T1500A.043
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T1500A.044
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T1500A.045
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T1500A.046
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T1500A.047
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T1500A.048
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T1500A.049
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T1500A.050
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T1500A.051
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T1500A.052
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T1500A.053
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T1500A.054
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T1500A.055
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T1500A.056
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T1500A.057
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T1500A.058
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T1500A.059
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T1500A.060
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T1500A.061
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T1500A.062