Ordinary Americans are about to get more protection for their car navigation and other GPS devices. On Friday Representative Jim Cooper (D-TN) introduced a bill in the House of Representatives to require Ligado Networks, a Virginia-based private company, to reimburse private companies and individuals for any damage the company’s operations cause to their GPS-reliant equipment.
The bill, which has bipartisan House support, mirrors the bipartisan bill in the Senate introduced by Senator Jim Inhofe (R-OK) in June, cosponsored with Senator Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill) and Mike Rounds (R-SD). The bills do not require additional Federal spending.
The risk to Americans’ navigation devices comes from a 2020 Federal Communications Commission Order granting an application from Ligado Networks to operate a terrestrial network using spectrum next to the bands reserved for Global Positioning System. Ligado should have no objection to the bills if its transmissions do not interfere with Americans’ GPS equipment.
The FCC’s Order, which was not open to public comment, acknowledged the potential costs by obliging Ligado to pay for damages to Federal devices. Plus, the Commission required Ligado set up and maintain a toll-free number for Americans to report interference. But the FCC did not require Ligado to compensate the individuals and companies who called the toll-free number for costs that could run into the tens of billions of dollars.
This discrepancy is what brought embers of both chambers and both political parties together in the RETAIN GPS and Satellite Communications Act, S. 2166 and HR 4634.
Senator Inhofe said, “When Ligado’s effort to repurpose spectrum causes interference in the infrastructure of those systems, as tests have shown it will, consumers and taxpayers shouldn’t bear the burden of updating countless systems. That cost should only be borne by the responsible party: Ligado.”
A substantial part of America’s infrastructure depends on GPS, which uses 24 satellites to provide positioning, navigation, and timing services for the electricity grid, as well as for financial services, agriculture, construction, and transportation.
If Ligado should have to pay for damage to Federal equipment, then it should also have to pay for damage to private equipment, especially since Uncle Sam has more spending power than the average American household.
Damage to Americans’ devices may occur because Ligado’s signals will be two billion times as powerful as received GPS signals. GPS signals are 20 watts at the satellite, which is 20,000 kilometers away from Earth.
The National Telecommunications Information Administration, on behalf of the entire Executive Branch, filed a petition in 2020 asking the FCC to reconsider the Ligado approval, citing “irreparable harms to Federal government users of the Global Positioning System.” If Federal users of some equipment will be harmed, private users of the same equipment will also be affected.
In response to the RETAIN Act, Ligado stated last month that “Years of data, testing and congressional testimony make it clear that – just like government GPS users – consumer devices like smartphones and safety-of-life equipment, like certified aviation receivers, are not at risk from Ligado operations.”
Although smartphones and certified aviation receivers are not at risk, according to the Department of Transportation’s Adjacent Band Compatibility Study, car navigation systems, helicopter terrain awareness warning systems, general aviation, and unmanned automated vehicles would all be affected.
If Ligado 5G transmitters were to swamp GPS signals, emergency workers might not be able to find their destinations. Plus, private pilots might find that navigation technology does not operate, joggers might find that their health trackers ceased to work, and firefighters might not be able to get to their destinations. Your Tesla might not work on autopilot.
Over 100 million cars in the US have GPS and satellite communication functions, for car navigation, or for the telematics that tell auto companies that something is wrong with the vehicle. New car navigation systems start at $500 and can cost over $1,000. That’s potentially $50 billion to $100 billion in damages.
About 8.5 million medium and heavy trucks have GPS systems, which are used for navigation, fleet management, routing, and electronic logging devices. The Ligado system could cost the average trucker $400 to replace a system. That’s $3.4 billion.
GPS and satellite communications are used on tractors for farm planning, field mapping, soil sampling, crop scouting, and yield mapping. Farms have many tractors, and farmers don’t want their tractors’ navigation systems to go down because of Ligado. It would cost the average farmer over $2,000 per tractor to replace the system.
Scientists routinely use GPS and satellite communication to measure climate change. The American Meteorological Society, the American Geophysical Union, and weather forecasting companies told the FCC that “Approving Ligado’s proposals will negatively impact real-time environmental and storm forecasts and will have direct consequences on the safety and well-being of the American people.”
In these days of partisan gridlock, it’s notable that Republicans and Democrats in the House and the Senate have come together with a bill protecting consumers from interference by Ligado—just as the FCC protected Federal equipment. That’s because sometimes basic fairness and common sense win.
