FCC: We've Sent 13,000 Pages of LightSquared Documents to Committee

At press time, an FCC spokesperson said that the commission
Wednesday turned over 13,000 pages of LightSquared documents to the Republican
leaders of the House Energy & Commerce Committee, according to a committee spokesperson,
who said the FCC would continue to cooperate with the committee.

A committee spokesperson was not immediately available to
confirm receipt.

It has been a month since the Feb. 28 request by Reps. Fred
Upton (R-Mich.) E&C Committee chair; Greg Walden (R-Ore.), Communications
Subcommittee chair; and Cliff Stearns (R.-Fla.), Oversight and Investigations
Subcommittee chairman for information pertaining to the FCC's waiver to
LightSquared, which it is now planning to rescind due to GPS interference
issues.

The legislators did not give the FCC a deadline, but the
release of those documents is expected to trigger their vetting by Sen. Charles
Grassley (R-Iowa) -- the committee has signaled it will share them -- after
which Grassley has suggested he may lift the threatened hold on FCC
commissioner nominees Jessica Rosenworcel and Ajit Pai.

The FCC would not share the documents with Grassley because
he does not chair one of the FCC oversight committees, which prompted the
senator to put the hold threat on the nominees.

John Eggerton

Contributing editor John Eggerton has been an editor and/or writer on media regulation, legislation and policy for over four decades, including covering the FCC, FTC, Congress, the major media trade associations, and the federal courts. In addition to Multichannel News and Broadcasting + Cable, his work has appeared in Radio World, TV Technology, TV Fax, This Week in Consumer Electronics, Variety and the Encyclopedia Britannica.