The US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has said that it plans to indefinitely suspend a conditional waiver that would permit LightSquared to build a ground-based LTE network using satellite spectrum. The decision was made following a recommendation from the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), which said that it performed a “substantial amount of testing and analysis” regarding LightSquare’s plans and the impact they would have on GPS services.

A project to provide Europe with more reliable satellite navigation technology is nearing fruition after the European Commission (EC) announced that the first two satellite-navigation spacecraft are ready for launch.

Philip Falcone, manager of hedge fund Harbinger Investments, which funds US wholesale LTE/satellite player LightSquared, has hit back at the US interest group the Coalition to Save our GPS, claiming that interference problems are the fault of incumbent GPS users, and not of LightSquared. In an interview with US broadcaster CNBC, Falcone said that existing GPS users did not apply the “proper filtering” to their devices and that “we’re not interfering with them; they’re interfering with us.”

Greenfield operator LightSquared’s woes look set to continue, with news that a US House of Representative’s committee has passed a bill blocking the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) from granting the would-be wholesaler a waiver it needs to move forward.

US wholesale carrier LightSquared’s proposed mobile network does cause interfere with local GPS signals, a US government agency has confirmed. The news comes as a blow to LightSquared, which is hoping to be a disruptive force in US telecoms space by offering a country-wide LTE network on a wholesale basis for third-parties to run services over.

Many years ago the Informer sat in a university lecture room doodling on his notepad. Back then this was an actual notepad, the whole concept of portable computers being nothing but a geek fantasy. After all, this was a time when you had to be accompanied by an IT student into their baffling department if you wanted to have a look at something they kept there called The Internet.

Just over a year ago, monster carrier Vodafone showed just how serious it was about the navigation space, by spending €26m on the purchase of Swedish navigation and location-based services firm Wayfinder.

Estonian operator EMT said Wednesday that it has completed field trials of A-GPS technology embedded into the SIM card, allowing location based services (LBS) to be deployed to legacy handsets.

UK carrier O2 announced on Monday that it has struck a deal with mobile navigation specialist Telmap which will see that firm’s personal navigation and mapping service deployed on the majority of GPS-enabled handsets sold by the operator.