Wayne Rash

The Federal Communications Commission has effectively killed LightSquared€™s plan to build its own terrestrial wholesale 4G data delivery system. The FCC€™s action followed a letter from the National Telecommunication and Information Administration (NTIA) that found LightSquared€™s original and modified plans for its proposed mobile network would cause harmful interference to the nation€™s GPS receivers. The […]

The good news is that Apple is finally feeling the heat from its customers about how its contract manufacturer, Foxconn, treats the people who make the iPads and iPhones you love so much. The bad news is that those workers will see little, if any, benefit from visits by auditors from the Fair Labor Association, […]

Apple€™s introduction of the iPad 3 is cleverly planned to coincide with the massive CeBIT trade show in Hannover, Germany, in early March. This means that I€™ll be forced to miss the lines that are sure to stretch for blocks, the madness, the pepper-spraying of fellow customers. But I€™ll still have to make a decision […]

The House Subcommittee on Aviation, which is part of the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure of the U.S. House of Representatives, held hearings Feb. 8 regarding the critical nature of GPS to aviation in the United States, and the issues raised LightSquared€™s plans to implement a broadband data service on frequency band adjacent to the […]

As peculiar as the after-the-fact announcement of Google Bouncer may have been, it was still good news. Perhaps Google was ramping up, trying to make sure that its Bouncer would work as intended and be able to handle the flood of new apps submitted to the Android Market. Perhaps the company just wanted a head […]

After writing an article about rising concerns over the working conditions in the factories operating in China byFoxconn, Apple’s contract manufacturer for iPhones and iPads, I heard from readers about a number of points. First, there are a lot of readers who think Apple’s profit margins are obscene and point to the obviously marginal conditions […]

The recent uproar about the conditions inChinese factories where Apple’s iPhones, iPads and iPods are manufactured is getting a lot of attention, partly because of an article in the New York Times. A great deal more attention is likely due to the lead story that appeared on CBS Sunday Morning on Jan. 29, in which […]

The people who run LightSquared are not happy campers. Of course, they have plenty of reasons for this particular winter of discontent, but in the case of the military testing of LightSquared’s interference with GPS devices, they might have a reason. The government testers, the company claims, haven’t been playing fair. Of course, that’s kind […]

Imagine, if you will, SOPA with even more restrictions than the bill that was shelved by Congress last week. Now imagine that it’s administered by a shadowy international organization that has no accountability under U.S. law, but can still order your ISP to monitor your personal communications. Finally imagine that this organization can order you […]

The U.S. Supreme Court released a unanimous opinion on tracking suspects using GPS locaters attached to cars, saying it is unlawful to initiate a GPS search without a warrant. A U.S. Supreme Court decision released on Jan. 23 will have a significant impact on how law enforcement officers can use GPS technology to track criminal […]

The week when Wikipedia’s English edition went dark, it was only the most visible sign of a great level of global concern about the attempts by U.S. lawmakers to assert their views of copyright law on the rest of the world. One of the provisions of the two proposed laws would give judges in the […]

You know that a company is failing when the investment sharks start to circle. The biggest shark of all, Carl Ichan, has purchased $300 million in LightSquared debt. If LightSquared runs out of money, which could happen as early as April, this would effectively give Ichan ownership of LightSquared’s spectrum. Ichan, appearing to have no […]