LightSquared Amendment to HR 2354

HR 2354 is a spending bill for energy and water development and related agencies for FY 2012. It is not really a bill where one would expect to find much in the way of chemical or cyber security issues being addressed. But you do have to watch congress critters and spending bills; lots of things get added to them.

Yesterday, Sen. Roberts (R,KS) proposed amendment #984. It would add one of those neat funding restrictions, this time with the FCC as the target agency. The new section would read:

“None of the funds made available in this Act may be used by the Federal Communications Commission to remove the conditions imposed on commercial terrestrial operations in the Order and Authorization adopted by the Commission on January 26, 2011 (DA 11–133), or otherwise permit such operations, until the Commission has resolved concerns of potential widespread harmful interference by such commercial terrestrial operations to commercially available Global Positioning System devices.”

This is obviously targeted at the broadband internet system from LightSquared which operates at frequencies near enough to the GPS frequencies that it has been demonstrated that there can be interference from the much stronger terrestrial single. The concern from the point of view of the chemical safety community is that the GPS signals may be used for coordinating timing between physically separated yet connected elements. Interference with the signal could cause communications issues.

It is not clear that this amendment will actually be considered by the Senate; most amendments listed in the Congressional Record never make it to a vote or even a discussion about consideration.