LightSquared has reportedly garnered a six-week extension from Sprint Nextel to gain approval for use of its 1.6 GHz spectrum assets from the Federal Communications Commission that are currently tied up in interference issues with the GPS community.
The six-week reprieve follows a month-long extension granted by Sprint Nextel that was to allow LightSquared additional time to straighten out its interference issues that have so far prevented it from gaining access to its 1.6 GHz spectrum assets. LightSquared had signed a network and spectrum hosting agreement with Sprint Nextel last year that was reliant on LightSquared gaining access to its spectrum assets.
Sprint Nextel touted LightSquared’s spectrum assets as allowing the carrier to extend its traffic capacity from 2014 with its own holdings to 2015 when including the LightSquared spectrum. However, the carrier has since moved closer to its subsidiary Clearwire as a potential home for future spectrum needs.
LightSquared held a media conference call earlier this month to again rail against leaks from tests that showed the use of mobile devices on its network would interfere with some GPS systems. LightSquared claimed that the latest round of testing conducted by the Air Force Space Command on behalf of the space-based Positioning, Navigation, and Timing Executive Committee was “rigged by manufacturers of GPS receivers and government end users to produce bogus results, and revealed details of the testing to document its accusations.”
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