Joel Thayer: Why the Pentagon Wants Ligado’s Scalp
The dispute over Ligado highlights a clash between the FCC’s spectrum policy decisions and Defense Department’s efforts to block them.
Imagine you are trying to enter a lease with a landlord. You heavily negotiate the terms, accommodate every request asked of you, and all relevant parties have signed the deal. Let’s say you have even put down your deposit that is made up of first and last months of rent, paid for movers, loaded up the truck with all your belongings, and even forwarded your address.
However, just as you’re moving in, a random neighboring HOA, not party to the lease agreement and with no cognizable right to interject, chains up your door to deny you entry until you submit to even more demands that make your use of the property effectively useless. Worse, they are offering you no concessions or options to recoup what you have already spent on the move.
Sound fair? I’d hope not. This is what the Department of Defense has done to Ligado Networks, but so much worse.
But first, some background.
In 2020, Trump’s Federal Communications Commission (our landlord) approved Ligado’s (our prospective tenant) request to modify its licenses to provide modest 5G and IoT services. The vote at the FCC was unanimous and bipartisan. However, soon after the vote, the DOD (the pesky HOA) attempted to circumvent the FCC’s process by tying the entire proceeding up in regulatory purgatory.
They even leveraged its private contractors, like billion-dollar contractor Iridium, to employ a smear campaign against the FCC and Ligado to kill this bipartisan deal at the FCC. Both constituencies inanely asserted that granting Ligado this relief would make GPS for the military unusable due to Ligado’s interference. They even had some of their lobbyists absurdly analogize that granting Ligado’s request is tantamount to placing “a frat house next to a library.” When in all actuality the FCC was setting up a book club in the next town over from GPS operations given the power levels it was operating at and the massive 23 MHz guard band—that required Ligado to give up its own spectrum to create, mind you—separating Ligado’s operations and its GPS services.
Even more strange is that they would tell congressional members that the FCC decided to do this in a rush, when the proceeding dates back to 2003—5 presidential administrations ago.
But how is this worse than our hypothetical?
Well…it’s because the DOD and every other government and private stakeholder had an opportunity to voice their concerns to the FCC. Worse for their position is that they did and the FCC accommodated every single one of their issues. As referenced above, Ligado even gave up some rights to get the deal over the line.
Let’s unpack this further to demonstrate the absurdity.
The FCC’s order was built off of decade-long negotiations and clearly incorporates all of the government users’ concerns. This is evident from the fact that the NTIA, DOD, Department of Transportation and Federal Aviation Administration submitted no complaints to the FCC’s inquiry regarding Ligado’s application circa 2017. The FCC stated clearly that the DoD has not provided any information to support its assertions that a “vast” number of GPS systems will be impacted. The FCC also pointed out that the devices the DoD is referring to are operating outside their allocated spectrum; in other words, they have no rights here.
Ligado already had coexistence agreements with GPS manufacturers (i.e., Garmin, John Deere, Trimble, NovAtel, Hexagon, Leica and Topcon) that represent the lion’s share of the GPS market. This provides these companies with more legal protection on top of the FCC’s restrictions on Ligado. Thus, these concerns are sufficiently addressed by the FCC’s Ligado Order and other legal mechanisms.
In sum, there was little chance the DOD’s or Iridium’s systems would be affected by Ligado’s 5G services.
And yet, the DOD has still tied this whole proceeding up by slipping in discrete language into its budget bills, namely the 2021 National Defense Authorization Act, to further gum up the works for the company.
This political posturing has tied up so much resources that the company is in bankruptcy even though it has gone through every hurdle asked of it.
But why is the military industrial complex out for blood over this?
In sum, government’s avarice. The DOD’s true mission here, it appears, is to collect Ligado’s scalp to demonstrate to Congress that, if they want its spectrum, they’ll have to pry it from their cold, dead hands. Government agencies have pulled this same playbook in Trump 1.0 when Trump opened up 5.9 GHz, C-Band, and 24 GHz. Worth noting, none of those cases resulted in the fruition of any of the government’s “chicken little” claims. Based on this precedent, we must assume their attacks against Ligado is another example of them crying wolf once again.
Look, government spectrum users understand that Congress is coming for a resource that it felt would forever be in its domain: spectrum. Indeed, as the world increasingly moves over to mobile, the more spectrum it requires. Worse is that the greatest hoarder of usable spectrum isn’t a wireless monopoly, or even Big Tech; it’s our own government. Rough estimates suggest that the government is sitting on about 60% of usable spectrum for 5G and 6G. To put this in perspective, China’s government doesn’t even have this much spectrum.
Frankly, we need more of government’s spectrum if we want to have more than a snowballs chance in hell of competing with China in the global race for technological dominance, especially AI that is also increasingly moving over to mobile.
To be sure, this is more than just Ligado. If we give in here, DOD and other government users will just keep leveraging this strategy to keep all of our systems stuck in the past.
If we want to beat China, we need the DOD to stand aside here and let innovation ring.
Joel Thayer is president of the Digital Progress Institute and an attorney based in Washington. Digital Progress Institute is a nonprofit seeking to bridge the policy divide between telecom and tech. This Expert Opinion is exclusive to Broadband Breakfast.
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