There was a celebration at the satellite wireless broadband provider’s Reston, VA headquarters last night. The once financially-troubled company announced it reached an agreement with the agriculture equipment manufacture to end a two-year court battle over spectrum use for L-Band.
“Under the agreement, New LightSquared agreed to reduce out-of-band emissions from currently authorized levels and to file a request at the FCC forgoing terrestrial use on parts of the spectrum,” said the newly evolved company in statement released early Tuesday evening. “Subject to these network commitments, Deere agreed not to object to the new company’s terrestrial deployment plans. As part of this agreement, the parties also finalized settlement of a lawsuit involving claims between the parties.”
It was late last week that the company, formerly known simply as LightSquared, was cleared by the FCC to transfer its spectrum to the newly formed company. It was blocked by FCC from moving forward once it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in May, 2012, when the GPS industry complained that the spectrum owned by the company was too close to what GPS was using and could cause interference. On March 26, 2015, Judge Shelley C. Chapman approved the company’s reorganization plan and set the wheels in motion for the company to be revitalized.
Ivan Seidenberg, former chairman and CEO of Verizon Communications Inc., was then picked to head the new LightSquared and late last week the FCC cleared a new path for the company to proceed. “Today’s FCC approval will enable LightSquared to successfully exit bankruptcy protection, but, more importantly, it kick starts a major step toward private investment in our national wireless infrastructure,” Seidenberg said Friday. “I am delighted to be joining the new LightSquared Board as its Chairman; we intend to do everything possible to achieve a reasonable business solution as well as an engineering consensus between wireless broadband and the GPS industry. We recognize that our number one job will be to resolve technical issues and liberate scarcely used satellite spectrum that’s actually ideal for the cellular industry. I am confident we can reach a mutually-acceptable outcome that not only makes industry better off but also benefits consumers of wireless and GPS products.”
