LightSquared is jilting taxpayers out of billions, GPS industry claims

The Coalition to Save our GPS has opened up a new front of its war of words with LightSquared.

It’s now claiming that if LightSquared really had permission to build a terrestrial mobile broadband network than it should have paid billions of dollars for that right at auction, just like any other U.S. wireless operator. The Coalition is claiming that LightSquared is trying to pull a regulatory slight-of-hand to gain a windfall in mobile broadband frequencies outside of the normal auction channels. By turning L-band spectrum formerly designated only for satellite transmission into terrestrial mobile spectrum, LightSquared is effectively increasing the value of its licenses by $10 billion, the Coalition said. Normally any designation of spectrum for mobile broadband would require a competitive auction among operators, raising billions of dollars for the U.S. Treasury. If LightSquared receives permission to build its terrestrial network, the Coalition said, it would circumvent that process, jilting taxpayers out of gobs of revenue during in financial troubled times and giving it an unfair advantage against traditional wireless operators.