The most severe interference will be close to the transmitters. They are talking about 4,000 ground stations, i.e. cellphone towers. The other source of interference is the mobiles that will use the service.

Most of these will be terra firma - on the ground. Most of those interfered with will be on land. And, most of the complaints will be from land based users. As you get away from land there will be less chance of interference. The land users will be screaming louder than the boaters. They will fight our battle for us. The next powerful lobby will be aviation - again, let them fight the battle for us.

While Lightsquared has a lot of money to buy influence, so do the affected industries. Think about the latest attempt to cut piracy on the internet by usurping due process. The entertainment industry has a lot of money to lobby Washington but a public awareness effort by Wiki, Google and others pretty much shut them down. We still live in a Democracy, a crippled one for sure but public opinion and the vote still count. The public's opinion of congress is at an all time low. They are very sensitive to the opinion of the masses.