said by FFH5:you'll know Lightsquared is getting closer to being a viable player in the space when your GPS stops working and you find yourself being routed off the edge of a cliff (along with various missile tests landing in populated areas).{{Pure FUD}}
Maybe, maybe not. GPS has a center carrier frequency of 1575.42MHz. Lightsquared has L-Band frequencies at 1525-1544MHz and 1545-1559MHz. If used for satellite communications, as the band was intended, there would not be an issue as all signals would be very low power here on Earth. However, the proposal to the FCC is to use those 1.5GHz frequencies for terrestrial communication meaning substantially higher power levels in that band when received here. As such, being near a tower transmitting on the 1545-1559MHz band could desense the sensitive receiver required to receive GPS signals and any other satellite signals adjacent to the Lightsquared allocation. Obviously laboratory tests of various satellite receiving equipment would be needed to verify this but I seriously doubt the current crop of civilian GPS receivers has the necessary bandpass filters to notch out everything except the GPS frequency allocation. To date there would not have been any point because all of the adjacent frequencies would also be satellite transmissions with signals no stronger than the GPS signal and as such would not overwhelm a receiver.
I suppose the solution could be to have everyone throw away every piece of existing civilian GPS equipment (GPS, iPhone's, Android's, fixed timing equipment, etc.) and replace it with newer equipment that has improved filtering. It would be a nice way to stimulate the electronics industry by forcing everyone to upgrade.
