The House Energy & Commerce Committee Friday
turned over LightSquared-related documents to Senator Charles Grassley
(R-Iowa), according to the committee.
"We
actually shared documents today," said a committee spokesperson. "We
are continuing to work together, and we will have additional updates to share
as we assess the information that has been delivered and what additional
documents are needed for our investigations."
Grassley
has said that if he got the documents from the FCC, whether directly or through
the request from The House E&C, he would consider lifting his hold on FCC
nominees Ajit Paui and Jessica Rosenworcel, who sailed through their Senate Commerce
Committee nomination hearing last fall with bipartisan support and are expected
to be confirmed by the full Senate if/when they get to a vote.
Senator
Grassley said in a statement in Februarythat his hold would remain in place "until I receive access to the
documents I requested, whether that's from the FCC, the House Energy and
Commerce Committee or the Senate Commerce Committee."
"We did get documents," said a Grassley spokesperson. "The hold stands pending document review."
FCC
officials have said they did not accede to Grassley's requests for documents
because the senator is not the chairman of a relevant oversight committee. But
Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.) is. He asked for the documents, and was given them last
week.
Republicans
are concerned that the FCC granted LightSquared a waiver in haste and its
backers are repenting in leisure after the FCC concluded after months of
testing and vocal complaints from the GPS industry and government
agencies that the planned wholesale wireless broadband service--in which those
backers invested billions -- would interfere with GPS. But the FCC's waiver
was always conditioned on the service not interfering with GPS, the FCC has pointed
out, as it somewhat reluctantly moved to rescind the waiver. Reluctantly,
because the commission is all for creating new price and service competition to
incumbents Verizon and AT&T.
