Defense Department to Move to Reverse Ligado’s Approval from FCC

(Bloomberg) -- The Defense Department will move to overturn Ligado Networks LLC's approval for a mobile network over concerns the planned service would interfere with military and civilian GPS receivers, a Pentagon official said.

“This is a bad deal for America,” Dana Deasy, the department's chief information officer, told the Senate Armed Services Committee during a hearing Wednesday. “There are too many unknowns and the risks are too great to allow the proposed Ligado system to proceed in light of the operational impact to GPS.”

Deasy, who was among several defense officials to testify, said he'd work to get the Federal Communications Commission to reverse its approval of Ligado's plan, granted April 20. The Defense Department will ask the Commerce Department arm that coordinates spectrum use to lodge a request with the FCC to reconsider, Deasy said.

Ligado, which wasn't invited to the hearing, said in a letter to the committee its service would operate at low power and wouldn't interfere with GPS devices using their assigned airwaves. “These airwaves are separate and distinct” from GPS, Doug Smith, Ligado's president, and its chairman, Ivan Seidenberg, the former chairman of Verizon Communications Inc., said in the letter.

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai, a Republican, earlier called approving Ligado a “step forward for American leadership in 5G and advanced wireless services.”

The FCC on Wednesday defended its decision.

“The FCC made a unanimous, bipartisan decision based on sound engineering principles,” an agency spokesperson said in an email. “We stand by that decision 100% and will not be dissuaded by baseless fear-mongering.”

Federal agencies including the Defense Department and Federal Aviation Administration had objected, citing potential interference to faint GPS signals that come from satellites.

Republican Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, and other lawmakers have called for the FCC to withdraw its approval and resolve Defense Department concerns, and that Congress might otherwise act.

“I do not think it is a good idea to place at risk the GPS signals that enable our national and economic security for the benefit of one company and its investors,” Inhofe said Wednesday. “Ultimately, the burden of mitigating harmful interference will be placed on the Department of Defense, and American taxpayers will be left footing the bill.”

At the end of February, Ligado hired David Urban, a longtime ally of President Donald Trump who runs the lobbying firm American Continental Group and has been a vocal defender of the president as a CNN political commentator, to work on its behalf. Despite only working for the company for a little more than a month, the company paid American Continental Group $100,000, according to an April 20 disclosure form.

Urban was a member of the West Point class of 1986 along with Esper and is a personal friend. Urban lobbied the White House, the Pentagon and the State Department, according to disclosures.

Secretary of State Michael Pompeo, another member of the class of 1986, on April 16 called approval of Ligado's plan “vital to our national security.”

Attorney General Bill Barr in an April 16 statement called approval for Ligado “essential if we are to keep our economic and technological leadership and avoid forfeiting it to Communist China.”