Harbinger Capital Issues Statement in Response to EXCOMM Decision
NEW YORK, Jan. 13, 2012 In response to today's announcement by the National Executive Committee for Space-Based Positioning, Navigation & Timing (EXCOMM) that no further tests are needed to evaluate LightSquared's real world operating conditions, Harbinger Capital today issued the following statement:
We are confident that the tests, when the protocol is disclosed and the details are examined, will be shown to be invalid. The devices chosen by GPS manufacturers to be tested were selected to ensure failure. They included obsolete GPS receivers (some a decade out of production) and niche-market receivers. This is nothing more than a thinly-veiled attempt by government agencies to protect the interests of the GPS industry who are unauthorized users infringing on spectrum licensed to LightSquared.
We have already asked for an investigation by the NASA Inspector General. Today's letter validates the need for that investigation.
We are hopeful that the National Telecommunications & Information Administration (NTIA), which has responsibility to oversee the process, will take the necessary steps to provide an unbiased and complete evaluation of actual effects of LightSquared's system on GPS users, including use of independent laboratory evaluation, consideration of mitigation measures to which LightSquared is committed, and the testing of contemporary GPS receivers rather than obsolete units. We are also hopeful that these results will be assessed using the actual power levels at ground level that have been committed to by LightSquared, which are 1/32 of the power level erroneously estimated by EXCOMM in its flawed assessment, and that NTIA and the FCC will take appropriate measures to ensure that this invalid testing does not prevent Americans across this country from benefiting from the $14 billion of private investment into high-speed broadband infrastructure this country desperately needs.
SOURCE Harbinger Capital
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