Here’s the reality: Five of the largest GPS manufacturers have said they are not opposed to Ligado’s spectrum proposal. Ligado worked directly with each company over the past two years to find a path forward that meets their needs. In December 2015, Ligado entered into concrete settlement agreements with Garmin and John Deere, after which Garmin stated it “doesn’t anticipate any performance-degradation issues.” And in 2016, Ligado entered into additional agreements with Trimble, NovAtel, and Topcon — with the latter noting, “We look forward to coordinating with Ligado over the coming years as it deploys a ground network.”

These agreements were a result of Ligado going to great lengths to develop a plan that ensures GPS receivers are protected.

Ligado is not planning to become a national telecommunications provider with 40,000 towers. Instead, the company has asked the FCC to use the spectrum for new, targeted networks that will help America’s industrial sector take advantage of 5G and the “internet of things” — a fact presented to the authors by Ligado in November. More critically, the authors also ignored volumes of data and thousands of hours of testing collected and analyzed in 2016 at government labs in Colorado.

This testing was developed and executed by our nation’s top scientists and engineers and shows that GPS devices of all kinds can co-exist with Ligado’s services, or be readily adapted to do so.

Read the full op-ed at The Hill.