WASHINGTON—Sam Matheny, CEO of newly launched Merkhet Solutions, today told a House subcommittee that the country is becoming “dangerously overdependent” on GPS satellites for delivery of precise timing and positioning data.
Merkhet Solutions is the company spun off from the National Association of Broadcasters to develop commercial uses for the Broadcast Positioning System, a terrestrial backup to GPS. In testimony before the House Communications and Technology Subcommittee, Matheny warned lawmakers that GPS disruptions from jamming, spoofing, cyberattacks or natural failures could endanger critical infrastructure including energy, telecommunications, data centers and financial services.
These “risks endanger virtually every American critical infrastructure sector, including energy, telecommunications, data centers and financial services, where a disruption to precision time can trigger grid instability, network outages and lost transactions,” Matheny said.
BPS provides a backup to GPS by leveraging the nation’s TV broadcast transmission infrastructure to deliver precise timing information. “BPS is a patented terrestrial timing and position technology that leverages existing high-power broadcast infrastructure and licensed spectrum already covering the United States,” Matheny told the subcommittee. “BPS was first conceived by my team at NAB in 2021, and you can think of it as the terrestrial equivalent of GPS.”
A potential loss of GPS would affect national security and pose an economic risk of $1 billion in losses per day, Matheny testified.
Matheny laid out five BPS advantages, including:
- An infrastructure that is already in place.
- Transmission of BPS signals from high-power, tall towers in diverse locations, making it difficult to jam or spoof at scale.
- BPS uses existing licensed spectrum.
- BPS supports unlimited simultaneous users, meaning no bottlenecks—an essential element for emergency and critical infrastructure applications.
- BPS is independent of GPS and other global navigation satellite systems, functioning even when GPS is compromised.
Congress can help advance the speed and scale at which BPS can begin offering reliable GPS backup service, Matheny said.
“First, Congress should help accelerate BPS installation and operations through funding for traceable time, station hardware, calibration and ongoing network operations and monitoring,” he said.
Congress also “should support and work” with the Trump Administration in designating a lead agency to “expedite the activation of BPS and other complements to GPS,” he said.
“Finally, Congress should encourage the Federal Communications Commission to complete the important work it has already initiated on ATSC 3.0,” Matheny said. “In addition to the significant benefits to television viewers, including upgraded picture and sound and better emergency alerting, the full benefits of BPS cannot be harnessed until the FCC completes its work on the ATSC 3.0 transition.”
More information on Merkhet Solution is available on the Merkhet website.
