Chairman Pai's Response to Members of Congress Regarding Ligado

On May 7, 2020, several Members of Congress wrote to Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai to express deep concern about the FCC's approval of Ligado Networks request to modify licenses. "The national security community was unanimous in the judgement that approval of the use of certain portions of the L band spectrum could pose an unacceptable risk to the use of the Global Positioning System (GPS) in the United States. In addition, other federal and nonfederal users of this spectrum have raised serious concerns, including satellite communications providers and airlines," they wrote.

On May 26, Chairman Pai responded by answering specific questions from the Members of Congress, and writing "The bottom line is this: The fact that another agency does not like the end result in this proceeding says nothing whatsoever about the process the FCC followed-a process that was both completely consistent with the Administrative Procedure Act and far, far more generous (not to mention far, far more delayed; I recently observed my eighth anniversary at the Commission, and when I started, this matter even then had been pending for years) than in any other proceeding of which I am aware. And it certainly does not diminish the soundness of the technical analysis in the Ligado Order, which was the result of the years of work by the FCC's excellent career staff's evaluating test results, compiling information in the record, and ultimately writing a thorough order for the Commission's consideration."