By Christopher Cole

Scores of industry groups want President Joe Biden to seek a reversal of a contentious Trump-era Federal Communications Commission policy that lets a mobile network company use airwaves long set aside for weather forecasting and satellite signals.

Ninety groups wrote to the White House on Monday, two years after the FCC allowed Ligado Networks to go ahead with its plan to use the L-band satellite airwaves for its terrestrial operations.

The groups represent a wide array of stakeholders opposed to the policy shift on use of the L-band, which the FCC in 2020 considered a prime slice of spectrum that could be used to accelerate next-generation wireless deployment. Signatories on Monday’s letter run from AccuWeather Inc. to the Wisconsin Agricultural Aviation Association.

Critics of the Ligado order not only want to see petitions taken up at the FCC to reconsider the company’s plan, but also to stay the order while the commission reworks its L-band policy. Several stakeholders have been fighting Ligado’s network initiative, citing concerns of harmful signal interference.

“The order threatens the critical GPS, satellite communications, and weather forecasting services relied on by millions of users every day and has faced unified and unprecedented opposition from the federal government, including 14 federal agencies and departments,” the letter to Biden says. “We therefore urge you to work with the FCC to address the imminent — but preventable — harm from Ligado’s proposed terrestrial network by staying the order pending resolution of the petitions for reconsideration.”

Representatives for Ligado’s corporate office in Reston, Virginia, could not be immediately reached for comment Tuesday. The company has long maintained that it has federal support for the plan stretching back years.

The letter’s signatories said Ligado’s plan threatens to interfere with services provided by communications, aviation and real-time environmental satellite data providers.

They noted that eight petitions to overturn the order remain pending, and said lawmakers want the plan on ice while the FCC revisits the issue.

“Staying the order is necessitated by the clear bipartisan will of Congress,” which has mandated an independent technical review to further assess interference from Ligado’s plan and required the U.S. Department of Defense to brief federal officials “at the highest level of classification” on the potential for widespread harm, the letter says, citing the defense authorization bill for fiscal 2021.

“On this basis alone, the FCC should stay the order to adequately consider the material new information that will be uncovered as a result of these ongoing congressionally-mandated processes,” said the groups.

The letter notes that Ligado has said it plans to deploy as soon as Sept. 30. That’s well before the FCC may act on the petitions, and “the record convincingly demonstrates that the order is legally and factually deficient, and the potential for harm grow

s closer on a daily basis,” it says.

An FCC spokesman declined to comment Tuesday.

–Additional reporting by Nadia Dreid. Editing by Adam LoBelia.