The bottom line is that the US has suspiciously high wireless data costs and a duopoly controlling the market. It's either make more players, effectively regulate the existing players, or allow the overpriced drag on consumers to persist.

There are only a quarter million airplanes in the US. Retrofit all of their navigation aids systems and free up a couple hundred MHz of bandwidth and you'd still pay for it with one year's savings from the mobile internet consumers. (And probably have better navigation in the planes.)

That's wrong. Only specific bands of wireless are unregulated; the bands at issue here are heavily regulated and are restricted to low-power satellite transmissions. Lightsquared had a conditional use permit to use the spectrum it purchased for alternative purpose but only if it could show that it would not interfere with the use of other low powered satellite transmission spectrums. Light-squared failed to do so.

An example that has been brought up before: its as if Lightsquared bought a house in a residential neighborhood, zoned for residential, and then tried to demand the right to use it as a venue for holding large-scale commercial concerts.

It's kind of like buying land zoned for industrial use next to the airport because you can get it rezoned for residential and make a ton of money. And the airport is saying WTF, now we're going to have to deal with local voters who will want us to change the way we do things.

If you're going to do this sort of thing, you need to make sure you have your engineering down pat, and your local politicians and regulators in your pocket.

see http://brontecapital.blogspot.com/2012/02/lightsquared-some-...

Personally, I think it makes sense to declare a quiet zone around the GPS frequencies if it enables smaller, cheaper, and lower power consuming GPS receivers. But that should involve relocating the existing license holders.