For LightSquared, a High Bar

To make good on its planned $14 billion investment in a national high-speed wireless network, start-up LightSquared must prove to the government that its network is perfect, or nearly so, in avoiding interference with global-positioning devices.

And that's just one of its challenges. A November deadline is approaching for federal regulators to finish their interference tests, raising the stakes for a project already confronting financial hurdles and political resistance. Amid complaints by GPS users, company officials say they realize the bar will be high for the start-up to show its network won't disrupt other traffic. "Are we going to be 100% successful? I hope so," said Martin Harriman, LightSquared's executive vice president of ecosystem development and satellite business. While problems with potential GPS interference still come up "on a daily basis," he said, "we work through them as we go."