The U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has denied Globalstar’s request for waiver of the Commission’s Ancillary Terrestrial Component (ATC) rules and rejected Open Range‘s request to operate its terrestrial network without a satellite partner, the commission announced.
    “We specifically reject Open Range’s request that we provide authorization for a period of 18 months, which would be beyond the 180-day maximum period permitted by statute.106 We observe that Open Range has been on notice since December 2009, if not longer, that Globalstar would not be able to meet the July 1, 2010, deadline, and thus already has had significant opportunity to seek access to alternative spectrum,” the commission said in its ruling.
    Wireless association CTIA hailed the FCC’s decision. “CTIA has long advocated for enforcement of the Commission’s ATC ‘gating criteria’ to ensure that satellite licensees provide the services for which they were granted licenses. Globalstar’s failure to live up to the gating criteria, and to subsequently live up to the conditions upon which the Commission granted it a waiver, validated CTIA’s concerns.  Globalstar could not meet the satellite needs of American consumers and instead sought to parlay a satellite license into a terrestrial network. Had the FCC granted Globalstar and Open Range’s requests, it would have amounted to an end-run of the Commission’s spectrum auctions and would have eviscerated the Commission’s licensing rules,” CTIA President and CEO Steve Largent said in a statement.