Analysis: LightSquared in 11th-hour effort to woo Washington
WASHINGTON (Reuters) ? Telecom startup LightSquared is mounting a last-ditch effort to win U.S. regulatory approval because a current telegram network backward being outmaneuvered according the GPS industry, which has spun doomsday scenarios of interference problems that could reason planes to fall out of the sky and threaten national security.
Billionaire hedge fund manager Philip Falcone has wager more than $3 billion of his Harbinger Capital Partners money aboard LightSquared, which in corner has spent more than $1 million aboard lobbying efforts in Washington apt offer to get acceptance apt launch a current high-speed telegraph network.
The company is staring down one end-of-the-month deadline for the ministry apt give the green light,along partners begin bolting and as its cash position gets more dire.
LightSquared reported a $427 million net loss because the 1st nine months of 2011 and could escape out of money in the second 15 min of this yearly whether it cannot raise additional central and financing.
LightSquared?s term loans were trading approximately 50 pence aboard the USD in the secondary mall a sharp subtract to their face value The loans were fetching 90 cents aboard a USD over the summer,paul smith handbags,merely the price for the debt dripped sharply as concerns over the GPS problems magnified and investors began wondering almost the company?s competence apt heave current money.
The breakdown of LightSquared could prove disastrous for Falcone?s hedge fund,as roughly half of Harbinger?s assets are knotted up in LightSquared.
Harbinger spokesman Lew Phelps said the hedge fund is focused entirely aboard working with LightSquared to acquire FCC acceptance?
LightSquared last month hireling Washington?s top-earning lobbying fixed Patton Boggs,to combine one additionally formidable force of 15 lobbying firms that includes Gephardt Group, K&L Gates, Dickstein Schapiro and Podesta Group.
The Reston, Va.-based company?s lobbying expenditures reached $1.24 million as of October 31,likened with equitable $265,timberland chukka boots,000 in 2010,according to data from the Center because Responsive Politics.
But it is a long shot, analysts said,because LightSquared apt vanquish the frighten strategy mainly sold to lawmakers forward the GPS industry, backed along huge names such as Deere & Co, Delta Airlines and Trimble Navigation Ltd. They contend that LightSquared?s network would overpower the weaker signals received by military and civilian global positioning system devices that serve purposes ranging from leading weapons apt planting harvests.
Those lawmakers clutch considerable sway with the Federal Communications Commission,jordan 5 retro, which has tugged its feet in approving the deployment of LightSquared?s high-speed telegraph broadband services.
?Right immediately I see indeed no access for LightSquared apt obtain political advocate In an election year I don?t think there?s a Democrat or Republican that ambition go surrounded 1,000 miles of LightSquared because of always the fear tactics that have been hired said former FCC chief engineer Ed Thomas, who joked that he still had scars from his dealings with the GPS industry meantime by the agent.
LightSquared and its lobbyists have become increasingly frustrated with the strategy of the GPS industry. They point to testing that has shown that the interference namely never a outcome of LightSquared?s signal bleeding into the GPS frequencies,merely instead is caused along GPS receivers looking into LightSquared?s airwaves.
LightSquared contends that GPS manufacturers knew by least six years ago that their devices were electing up LightSquared?s spectrum.
?All they had to do was put one of these filters in,an almost insignificant vary to their chart and we wouldn?t be where we are today,mentioned Jeff Carlisle,ferragamo purses, LightSquared?s magisterial vice chancellor of regulatory affairs and public policy.
But Jim Kirkland,Chanel ??, vice chancellor and common advice of Trimble and a founding member of the Coalition apt Save Our GPS,mentioned?the suggestion that GPS manufacturers ought have designed their equipment to adapt a prohibited spectrum use is completely meritless.?
Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, which ranks second among Washington?s height earning lobbying firms,is leadership the GPS coalition?s administration relations effort opposition LightSquared. Trimble shelled out $620,000 apt the fixed in the 1st three quarters of 2011 to lobby aboard GPS interference issues.
IMPROPER COMMUNICATIONS
LightSquared also contends that the GPS community has created a hyper-political rhetoric that has guided to accusations of movement donations creature accustom for leverage for meetings with senior White House aides and reports that senior administration officials were pressured to vary their congressional testimony to see more favorably aboard the telegraph venture.
?The other side has spun this up into this lunatic baseless accusation of political favoritism and radical vary by the FCC, and it?s nothingness of the sort,mentioned Mark Paoletta, a Dickstein Shapiro lobbyist working with LightSquared.
Paoletta is tasked with convincing policymakers that a solution exists. His information to them: amuse don?t blow up the process along acting on a misleading story that distorts the truths?
LightSquared has a vision to coil out a national network that would use satellites and land-based signals to reach roughly 260 million folk It is a private-sector venture that could help the Obama administration?s goal of extending affordable broadband services to more Americans. It also could support technology companies who are facing a spectrum crumple LightSquared intends apt sell wholesale telegram services apt companies which would afterwards resell the service below their own brand names.
LightSquared plans apt share network infrastructure with Sprint Nextel Corp and coincided apt disburse Sprint $9 billion to construct out LightSquared?s 4G network. The accession is contingent aboard LightSquared getting regulatory clearance along the annihilate of January.
That longing be a laborious task. The FCC has said LightSquared have to address entire interference and safety issues ahead it signs off on the company deploying its network. And deserving apt effective lobbying onward the GPS industry, Congress recently passed legislation that restricts the FCC from giving its acceptance until the U.S. Defense Department is satisfied that the interference issues are determined.
The FCC had no elucidate aboard the firm?s maximum recent filing urging acceptance.
A former senior FCC official who spoke on the condition of not creature labeled mentioned the agent has been sympathetic to LightSquared?s cause since 2003 while the agent accepted rules below former FCC Chairman Michael Powell, a Republican,apt allow LightSquared apt operate near GPS.
?The FCC staff has for a long period been of the outlook that GPS gets way likewise many protection,? the former lawful mentioned.
?They actually favor the fancy of using the spectrum more efficiently like LightSquared wants apt (so) you have a staff that namely very sympathetic aboard pure plan grounds to LightSquared,merely the politics of it have equitable transform a nightmare the former official told Reuters.
He added meantime the FCC would favor to O K LightSquared?s network, ?there?s a real feasibility this never gets off the layer?
HISTORY REPEATS ITSELF
GPS has a history of successfully selling its cause meantime a technological evolution namely discerned for a nuisance.
Ultra-wideband, a technology accustom in ground perceiving radar and some telegraph microphones, among other products, transmits information at quite cheap power levels but warred GPS to obtain off the ground a ten-year ago.
Thomas, the former FCC capital engineer,said he was informed of creating a situation where airplanes would crash and national security would be at risk during the continuing to authorize the UWB technology ? the same accusations LightSquared has been hit with. A heated battle ultimately saw the technology approved with what Thomas viewed for far stricter limitations than needed to defend GPS.
?There?s ? because lack of a better word ? I?m going to call it a religion GPS uses, which says don?t get near me,duration Thomas mentioned?The net result is we allowed the production,yet we limited innovation.?
LightSquared lacks the built-in political constituency GPS can flap aboard Capitol Hill,comprising the naval for well as defense airline, farm and electronics industries,said Jeffrey Silva,an analyst by Medley Global Advisors.
?It?s just hard for the FCC to go up against in a post-9/11 world, the Department of Defense while you?re talking about homeland security and safety of life,? Silva mentioned.
LightSquared?s Carlisle mentioned he is confident the fixed can shift the conversation away from the GPS industry?s frighten strategy and back toward the benefits of LightSquared?s network.
?We deem that the underlying technical facts and the allowable position on this namely so strong that,at last that pedals the resolution of this. The politics eventually must acknowledge reality,? Carlisle said.
(Reporting By Jasmin Melvin; Editing by) Related articles? http://www.answers.denhub.com/?p=156395 http://www.myage.com.hk/forum.php?mod=viewthread&tid=156516 http://www.52haizi.com/thread-152177-1-1.html http://www.cn3-d.com/forum.php?mod=viewthread&tid=66714 http://tg-design.hk/forum.php?mod=viewthread&tid=483495 http://tg-design.hk/forum.php?mod=viewthread&tid=483495
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