| MFA precision ag manager Rick Greene on the ongoing LightSquared vs GPS kerfuffle |
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| Written by stevefairchild |
| Thursday, 08 December 2011 14:39 |
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A message from MFA Precsion Agriculture manager, Rick Greene on the ongoing efforts to maintain the integrity of GPS for agriculture producers and service providers: I feel fortunate to have an opportunity to visit with Missouri's Congress man and women about our passion for precision agriculture and what it does for our farmers. To my staff: Thank you, without your great support, hard work and knowledge I would have not been able to have time to spend on this issue. I would also like to extend a big thank you to Agriculture Retail Association (ARA), Andy Karellas (House Small Business Committee Aid), Peter Large with Trimble and Paul Scolese with AKINGUMP who did a great job coaching me and helping to put together my testimony. Also a special thanks to Paul Schrimpf with Crop Life Magazine who has passed on some great information and great timing for the October 2011 CropLife. Jon Samson and Richard Gupton with ARA, I really appreciate you guiding me around the Hill and showing me the ropes. And thank you to everyone for their supporting words and encouragement.
Key Points to the testimony Background: LightSquared (LS), owned by Philip Falcone, purchased SkyTerra who owned the MSS band in March of 2010. See attached Facts and figures document. The MSS band is used by satellite phone, emergency broadcast band, and correctional signal for OmniStar and StarFire 2 signal. In essence, LS purchased SkyTerra for this frequency band, expect to be extraterrestrial, at an extremely extremely cheap price and are trying to bring it to the terrestrial level and increase the power 1 million times. LS terrestrial signal will interfere with GPS because of the increase in power and its closeness to the GPS frequency. LS plan is to put up networks near cities and then broadcast wireless broadband to rural areas. Here is the problem, the satellite will not be able to handle the data volume of all rural America. The MSS Band has 2 segments. The Upper band which was original tested will affect all GPS receivers. The lower band will only affect high accuracy receivers because high accuracy receivers need to have the whole band to get the high accuracy. LS plight is to provide competition to cellular companies offerings.
Here are some questions that we still don’t have the answers too… 1. We still don't know if WAAS will be affected or not. 2. LS is looking to solve the WAAS issue by lowering power and narrowing the frequency band but still needs to be tested. 3. The upper band is going to be used as satellite broadband for the next 4-5 year. Yeah, who wants to go through this again in another 4-5 years. 4. LS will be deploying this in stages starting with Urban areas then migrating to rural. LS is planning on addressing issues on the fly. 5. Potential dollar impact on agriculture for non-planted crops and crops not planted with high accuracy GPS. See attached Facts and figures documentation. 6. Retrofitting existing GPS could be possible for $1600 per receiver. The filter has only been tested on Javad GPS. 7. We are asking LS to take the financial responsibility of adding the filters and also figure out how to add the filter without voiding the warranty.
Please click on the link below if you would like to watch the testimony… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbcL-5DfPeY
To view the most recent updates please go to www.saveourgps.com and click on News Room. You will find some interesting articles from publications and the coalition press releases. Here is what is in the spot light…
1. Grassley to Place Hold on Two FCC Nominees Over Agency Stonewalling on LightSquared |
