LightSquared said the total cost for the government gear would be in the tens of millions of dollars, but declined to be more specific because it does not yet know how many precision GPS devices the government owns or what kinds of devices they are.

The company isn't planning to pay for the replacement or retrofitting of GPS gear used by private companies, said Terry Neal, LightSquared's senior vice president of communications. "We have not made an offer to swap out all the devices in the known universe." But he said users would not face an "onerous cost" to solve the problem.

LightSquared discussed the figures in a conference call on Wednesday afternoon following its earlier in the day that it has receiver technology that can solve the interference problem between LightSquared's network and precision GPS. In the original announcement, the carrier had not specified a cost for the solution.

Tests have shown interference between GPS and the LTE (Long Term Evolution) network that LightSquared wants to operate on frequencies that are now devoted to satellite services. The U.S. Federal Communication Commission has said it will not approve the network unless the interference problems can be solved.