The omnibus appropriations bill signed into law on Dec. 23, 2011, includes a provision in the Financial Services Appropriations bill to address concerns about interference to GPS receivers under the new network proposed by LightSquared.

The government’s most recent round of testing continues to show that LightSquared signals caused harmful interference to the majority of general purpose GPS receivers.

The provision in Public Law 112-74 reads: “None of the funds made available in this Act may be used by the Federal Communications Commission to remove the conditions imposed on commercial terrestrial operations in the Order and Authorization adopted by the Commission on Jan. 26, 2011 (DA 11–133), or otherwise permit such operations, until the Commission has resolved concerns of potential widespread harmful interference by such commercial terrestrial operations to commercially available Global Positioning System devices.”

The American Soybean Association supported congressional action and will continue advocating to ensure that precision agriculture GPS systems are not incapacitated by the LightSquared network.