LightSquared Contacts Rile Grassley

By John Eggerton -- Multichannel News, 1/30/2012 12:01:00 AM

Washington — Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), who has been seeking information from the Federal Communications Commission and others about LightSquared’s waiver to launch a 4G wholesale wireless network, has written to LightSquared principal Philip Falcone to ask him to explain what the senator calls a questionable contact with his office over the issue.

In the letter, Grassley said that contact — comprising email messages from both Falcone, chairman and CEO of LightSquared owner Harbinger Capital, and a person claiming to represent LightSquared — “intimated benefits for Grassley if he softened his inquiry of government approval of the project.”

Grassley said the email from Falcone — he supplied a redacted copy to the press — suggested that the network could be a “win” for Grassley, while the second example, an email string with someone whom Grassley said also arranged a booking on Fox News Channel for Falcone, “hinted” that Iowa could get a call center. According to the email messages, after Grassley’s office signaled that they thought the suggestion was inappropriate, the representative said he was only pointing out the issue’s local connection to the senator.

“Mr. Ruelle does not, nor has he ever, worked for Mr. Falcone, Harbinger or LightSquared as an employee or a consultant,” Harbinger spokesman Lew Phelps said. “No one at Harbinger or LightSquared has had any discussions or negotiations with Mr. Ruelle with respect to approaching or contacting Senator Grassley’s office regarding an alleged quid pro quo, or a call center in Iowa, which in any event would be inconsistent with the LightSquared wholesale business model. If such conversations occurred, Mr. Ruelle was acting entirely on his own and without the knowledge, authority, or endorsement of Mr. Falcone, Harbinger or LightSquared.”

Grassley is concerned that the FCC rushed the waiver for LightSquared’s proposed 4G network without sufficiently vetting how it would affect satellite-based global positioning systems. The FCC made the waiver conditional on resolving government GPS issues, and has since said it would not approve the network until those issues are resolved.

The National Telecommunications & Information Administration is currently preparing a report to the FCC on recent government testing of LightSquared that concluded it produced too much interference with GPS to be viable in either the short or long-term, results LightSquared has dismissed as bogus and controlled by GPS interests.

Grassley has also threatened to block any attempt seat two new FCC commissioners until the FCC produces documents related to the waiver. The agency has put some correspondence online related to Freedom of Information Act requests, but Grassley’s office said that is not responsive to the request. In the meantime, Grassley’s hold threat remains.

House Communications Subcommittee chairman Greg Walden (R-Ore.) last week said he would hold hearings on LightSquared, both on how the process moved so far along before the GPS interference issues were raised and about receiver standards. The fact that in-band transmissions from LightSquared interfere with sensitive GPS recievers is a major issue.