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>> this week on the "the communicator," sanjiv ahuja, ceo of a company trying to build a wireless broadband network across the u.s.. he discusses the science, engineering, costs, and political challenges of building the network as well as concerns that light square technology may interfere with gps globalling positioning equipment. >> host: sanjiv ahuja is the ceo of light scared. what do you do? >> guest: peter, thank you for

inviting me to the show, and good morning to both of you. what we're trying to do is build a network working with our satellite. that will enable americans, coast to coast, for the first time every square inch of american soil will be able to be connected whether it's hawaii, alaska, california, maine, to florida. if you can look at the american sky, you can talk on a phone, and for the first time, americans will have access to connectivity even if there are natural disasters and other things happening through our satellite network. now, we are building a network that's going to be the most comprehensive network using 4th

generation technology built to-date, but complement to the satellite we launched last year, it's the largest commercial satellite ever. whether it's the grand canyon or appalachian trail, you're connected. >> host: are you operational now? >> guest: no, we are not operationer. our satellite is operationer. our trees yal network is not operational. >> host: who are your customers? >> guest: our customers are host retailers. we don't go to the consumer. we go to other companies that take our service and offer it to the consumers. to date, we have signed 17 customers, so think of it from a consumers' perspective, these 17 companies, when we are operational can offer broadband

wireless connectivity to american consumers, so today when you look for a nationwide service, you have three or maybe four choices. we have enabled 17 companies to get into that buzz. now, part of those are national carriers today. spryness for -- sprint, for example, they are a customer. fifteen other companies, we've made them, enabled them to be national carriers because they are reselling our service to american consumers. now, that is something that has never happened anywhere in the world, not just the united states, anywhere in the world, that we really give so many more choices to the consumers. instead of having limited few choices that you have to date, we expect that number could be

as high as close to 100. more competition, more choices, lower prices. >> host: your competitors are the verizons, at&t's, and the comcasts? >> guest: we look at them as partners like sprint is, or potential partners. we are providing to them wireless broadband capacity, so at&t, veer wayson -- verizon or comcast, if they need capacity in new york or washington, how many times are calls dropped today? how many times is your data dropped today? that's because there's capacity shortage. we can supplement that capacity for either at&t, verizon, all of them, so we look at these companies either as current

customers or as our potential customers because what the industry is lacking is capacity. a few years ago when we started building the plan for this business, we were anticipating the industry will grow 30 to 40 times, the data demand in the industry over the next six to seven years. how i look at it, it grows over 50 times in the next four years. looking six months from a year from now, our forecast would be faster than that. the demand is growing faster than anybody anticipated. supply is limited, and we believe that we help augment that supply very significantly. all of these companies are either current partners or are potential partners. >> host: recently, lightscared took out full page ads in several major publications including "wall street journal"

and the new "new york times" ect.. there's been concerns raised with interference of the gps devices. what are those concerns, and who raised them? >> guest: okay. let me walk you through the history of lightsquared. this company's predecessor was formed in 1980s, and the spectrum was allocated in 1989. that's when there were no auctions and companies got spectrum as they needed them. a lot of the current large operators came in existence at the time. this spectrum originally allocated for satellite purpose. it worked through in 2000, 2001, 2003, 2005 under republican administrations. getting permissions from the fcc

to build a terrestrial network, that time gps industry council participated in the process and supported the process, and they made comments on our network design. we talked about how we would live as good neighbors because gps spectrums next door to the lightsquared spectrum. we defined rules that lightsquared will not transmit into the gps spectrum. that required us to make investment that we would build a big wall on our side that we would not transmit over. in 2010, when we were asking for a change of control when we acquired the predecessor company to lightsquared called sitara,

the fcc mandated us to build a network at a rate no company in the history of the united states has ever been required. we were asked -- required and mandated by the fcc -- to cover 260 million americans through our terrestrial network by end of 2015, a very aggressive schedule and build out schedule. it's a big challenge. we stepped up to it. we were excited because we truly believe it's a great opportunity, and you get to serve the american people that are being charged more tariffs than people in other parts of the world that are getting network quality that leaves a lot to be desired, and we see it as the data demand not getting filled properly. we saw it as a good opportunity, so we accepted those

conditions. in fall of 2010, we went to the fcc, and we asked for a change in the kind of device we would have. now, the devices we were building until that time would have both satellite coverage. one of our large customers said that can offer a service where it's a device that's both. they wanted a piece of mind -- peace of mind offer to customers. we'll connect you to the satellite, but most of the time, just to the terrestrial network. at that time, gps industry council stepped up and say, whoops, we're concerns because you're adjacent to the network. the issue was not what we're transmitting into the gps spectrum, but the issue was gps devices looking over into our

spectrum. now, what happened was we were building a network which was adjacent to the gps. we actually moved down to the lower part of the spectrum, so we are very far away. it's like you're constructing a building. we have a piece of land, and the gps guys have a piece of land, and they say, well, if you build close to us, you know, this is since we are looking into it, we have trees falling down close, so we went partest away from that -- farthest away from that spectrum, and that actually alleviated -- we have 400 million gps devices in this country. your cell phones, personal navigation devices in your cars, most of those problems went away. the cell phones not affected, personal navigation devices not affected when we move to the other end of the spectrum.

out of 400 million, about 500,000 devices, half a million devices, that are used for three specific applications -- agriculture, large tractors, construction, and surveying that were impacted by us being in that part of the spectrum. we have always believed, and i believe very passionately that this is an engineering problem that we can solve interference. i've been in this business over 30 years on both wireless networks in three dozen countries. i've had interference every single time i try to build a network. i built them from india to bangladesh to kenya to uganda to rwanda to tanzania to united states -- every time you build a network, there's interference,

and the way you resolve interference is through -- [inaudible] last time, i said this is a challenge, and we'll resolve that, and now last week what we announced was a device that helps solve the problem for agriculture devices, surveying, and construction devices. we can now live harmoniously with our neighbors and gps and have both networks up. the goal and objective is how does american consumer, how do you, how do i, how do our friends, our family gain from the lightsquared network? it is not about one or the other. it's about both living harmoniously. if you put a technical challenge to american engineer, they can solve it. i've confidently believed that, and i believe it today because we have demonstrated it, that

they can solve these engineering challenges. now we're in a situation that it's approved that it can be done, now let's work harmoniously, work into that plan to replace or refit these devices that are out there so that the farmers are not hurt because farmers are asking. a farmer says, yes, i need that precision navigation device, but i also want broadband. i want my children to do their home work while they are connected to the internet. they don't say give any this or -- give me this or that. they say give me both, and that's our responsibility. >> host: cecilia kang is the guest reporter with "the washington post." >> guest: if there is a technical collusion to the interference problems, and you have to do more testing of the

devices, of course, the federal government asked of what. what about the costs? i know you have committed at lightsquared more than $100 million; is that right? to defray costs or solutions or filters and ect.. the federal government, i believe, the general sheldon mentioned other federal government officials mentioned it could be in the billions of dollars, that the federal government would have to insur. there's a big discrepancy in the dollar figures here and the cost of how to resolve this problem. can you talk about that, and what that does then for sort of the future? can that be affected if you live harmoniously? how can you get some place in the middle? >> guest: cecelia, we heard it would take ten years to solve

this problem technically. it took us less than ten weeks to demonstrate that the problem can be solved. it's not as hard as what some people might have believed. our estimate is that the federal government has somewhere between 30,000-50,000 of these precision receivers. we overred to the federal government $50 million of replacement, refitting, or refurbishment of receivers that the federal government uses. we believe that is sufficient amount of money to replace most of the receivers or fix most receivers out there. we obviously don't have precise numbers on federal government to see how many receivers that they have today. then i think about our department of defense systems, i

have absolute confidence that these are resilience systems, that these are the systems that can handle transmission, not just from our band, but hopefully even within the gps band because you go on ebay today, you can get a gps device for $20; right? i'm confident we are building defense systems that can handle things you can buy off the shelf at electronics shop or off the ebay today that are transmitting the gps frequency. we are so far from the gps frequency. once we go through the testing, we have not gone through the testing yet, so some of the information you might hear might be based on old information. i think once the new testing happens, i am absolutely

confident that we, in this country, have robust and resilient dod systems. as a american citizen, i want to make sure that our defenses are resilient to $20gps. >> guest: some of the federal officials of the american people are afraid they have incur costs, and why should the federal government? that's the question. i believe senator grassley is sending a letter today asking the fcc and your company of the costs that this would incur to the federal government and taxpayers. i mean, i think that's the concern. the concern is why should a private company, why should americans take over the costs of resolving a problem for a private company? >> guest: so that's just -- think about it. i'm not aware of senator

grassley's letter, so i can't speak to what the letter might say. what i can speak to is look, we have made what we think is a very adequate offer for the federal government. it's a solution to a device to put a filter on devices that precision can work properly with them, and i think it takes care of most, if not all of the federal devices that we are aware of. now, if there's more, information has not been shared. let's talk about consumer devices. if we look at consumer devices, since 2001, 2002, 2003, 2005, some of these commercial device manufacturers, all of them have been aware that there is going to be a terrestrial network in this spectrum. >> guest: but does it believe

they would be terrestrial only devices? >> guest: terrestrial devices have nothing to do with the interference. the interference is what we transmit from the four base stations. devices have no physical impact on gps because we expect them to be gps enabled which really has nothing to do with the devices. it is all about what we transmit out of our base station, and that information has been there. some of the public filings of the gps manufacturers talk about this happening and the impact this has on their business, so having this capability and the resilience to the device would have cost a few cents if done properly at that time. now, building devices over

several years that are not conforming to how we should be living is fairly disappointing. i would say that the manufacturer of the product, if from my personal advantage point that there's a potential network coming in the network, it's been allowed, fc specifically specified the specific cations of how that network should look like, i would make sure the devices i make work, and actually 400-plus million of the devices work fine. your iphone, blackberries,

personal navigation system, they all work okay, but i think in the context of this, you have to look at what do americans want? when i look around the country, they want broadband like they want their gps. when i talk to farmers in kansas, they are saying don't give me precision gps or broadband. they are saying give me both. you talk to -- i was talking to a friend of mine. she was an hour and a half away from any city in tans tanzania, and she had five bars on her phone, and she was visiting her parents, an hour and a half away from atlanta, georgia, and she had zero bars on her phone. in that town, outside atlanta, in georgia, the residents of that down every afternoon, one of them drives with their

blackberries and iphones to download e-mails, once a day. it's like the days of fetching water. that's what americans are asking for. they say give us both. we have a solution that gives them both. >> guest: without a doubt, your plan, your business plan, is completely parallel in lock step with what this government wants in terms of broadband. you mentioned earlier that the fcc mandated you to do the biggest terrestrial broadband outreach ever covering 260 million people. in retrospect, it's been a tough few months for lightsquared in terms of the political, the politics around the process of which your company was off the ground of the regulatory process as well. do you -- do you, in retrospect,

do you wish or do you think that the fcc could have cast a broader and bigger process meaning, do you think it merited a full commission vote aside from the 2010 license transfer you're referring to, the 2011 waiver. do you think these things that happened, some say fast, you say it wasn't fast, but do you think the attention given the weight of this project and how it was mandated as the biggest project ever for the fcc as you said, should it have been for all commissioners to look at in >> go back to 2006. this company could have started building network in 2005. >> guest: there's a mandate for 260 million -- >> guest: but the network build out, it had the authorization to build out the network in 2005.

the company didn't have the financial capability to do it, so for a minute, ignore 2010. you can go back to 2005 when we had a republican administration. if they had financial wherewithall, you would have had the network for several years already. okay, not built at the base we're planning to build and asked to build, but the network would have been there, so it is not a question of what happened in 2010 or 2011. this is just having to go back to 2003 and 2005 processes. honestly, we believe that the fcc processes, they've gone through full ntia, fcc process with the government agency's participating, industry

participating, all of that process happened before the change of control, but i think it's more important to say, okay, what happened in 2005? what happened in 2003? because when we acquire the company in 2010, we acquired it on the basis of what authorization it had in 2005, and then we moved on to change of control in 2010. >> guest: do you wish there was more of a thorough process brought up to the level of all five commissioners? if there were the case, regardless of what happened in 2005, today, because it's such an important network and important plan to both the fcc, and, of course, porally to the country -- potentially to the country, that maybe you wouldn't be in the situation today of all these concerns about new testing, and, you know, now solutions and not, and the politics around it and the hearings and capitol hill. in retrospect, do you think, that, yes, there might have been a process starting in 2005, but nobody thought there would be

lte, this sort of lte solution in 2010, today, and the grand sort of the, the reach of it? >> guest: the process is very robust. it had participation from the department of commerce, the department, it had support and review and participation by all industry players at the time of change of control. that process took several months. it was not done in a week or two or month or two. it took several months of fcc process. now, it was disappointing that some of the people who have concerns today didn't think about those in 2003, 2005, and second half of 2009 as the process was going on. we've been asked to do the most extensive testing. i'm comfortable doing that

testing. interference issues are issues, and they are working on solving those. they solved most of the issues and put issues behind us. my other question is what happens when the network gets out there? it is not anymore the technically can't be done. we worked through technical challenges. i've been saying for months now that these are technical issues that should be solved and dealt with by engineers. i have had and continue to have absolute confidence in generating capabilities in this country. i was trained as an engineer in the united states. i know how good the talent is. you know, as i said, our interference issues since the early days of the wireless industry. >> host: in a sense, you tell me if this is wrong, but it sounds as if in a sense you're saying trust me to the american

plek, to the faa, to the fcc. >> guest: what i'm saying is trust the american engineers. trust the american ingenuity. when we can put a man on the moon, our engineers designed a system to do it. the last 20 years from the first network on, we have solved interference issues. they have solved this one. it is not what i'm saying is it is solved. it is our solutions out there today. americans are asking for all of that, and i'm saying let's just trust the american engineers to provide ail of it.