LightSquared May Degrade Hurricane Tracking

The House Committee on Science will hold a hearing Sept 8 on LightSquared's wireless Internet service.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Transportation Department and a federal advisory body will testify that LightSquared's service needs more testing because it may degrade precision services that track hurricanes, disrupting precise gear that reads data from the satellite-based global-positioning system. LightSquared is likely to say that its service and GPS can co-exist; it has proposed solutions, including initially using only part of its airwaves far from GPS users, that will resolve interference concerns for more than 99 percent of GPS receivers.