From Marc Cheves in the latest edition of the American Surveyor Today Newsletter... LightSquared was the biggest item on the agenda, and after two separate sessions, both sides of the issue agreed that the meetings were useful. 

The take-away for me was the fact that everybody (except LightSquared) agrees that LightSquared must not be allowed to use the upper of its two authorized spectrum bands. This IMAGE sums it up.

More from Cheves...

While at the Survey Summit I posted a write-up of the LightSquared sessions HERE. In it I provide details of the sessions, and also a link to a video Javad Ashjaee prepared especially for the event. The video is well worth watching because, in addition to being provocative, it provides fundamental information about how GNSS works. An extensive article about this also appeared on the GPS World website.

The video also contains Javad's other industry-rattling proposal: turning off the P-Code encryption on the L2 signal. According to Javad, the U.S. gains no security advantage by encrypting the signal. He encourages all users to contact as many people as possible, even President Obama. All sides agree that our nation will benefit economically from increased bandwidth, but it has become clear that we will not be able to co-exist with LightSquared's upper band.

Subsequent to the Summit, the Spatial Media team sat down with Javad and created two more exclusive videos which further explain signals, bandwidth, and Javad's proposal. These videos can be found HERE. Both of these videos cover not only surveying, but machine control and GIS mapping as well. In addition to explaining Javad's proposals, they are educational in nature.

My take on this is a variant of Gavin Schrock's idea: not only would it be a shame if the precise community in the US—the nation that gave the world the free GPS—is not able to use it, but economically it would do us great harm. There are three other constellations (GLONASS, Galileo and Beidou) either existing or in the build-out stages. Does the US want to be left out of the race? As Javad has said, it needs to be the Coalition to Save GPS and LightSquared.