They may not actually have a wholesale LTE network in place yet and the AT&T/T-Mobile deal surely didn’t help its cause much, but LightSquared has been making progress lately nonetheless. On Monday, Leap Wireless (NASDAQ:LEAP, news, filings) signed on for LTE roaming, and yesterday it was the consumer electronics retailier Best Buy throwing its weight behind their wholesale plan. Earlier this month, rural service provider OpenRange signed up, and MetroPCS was also making positive noises toward them too.
All this for a company that to date has a satellite, a pile of spectrum, and the funding to build out part way. The plan is to cover 100M people by 2012, and eventually 260M by 2015. Time to get cracking on that buildout I’d say. Only then will we really get a feeling for just how likely they are to succeed at their mission.
The fact that T-Mobile USA is now probably out of the picture does seem to take some of their sales. On the other hand, if the AT&T/T-Mobile deal runs into regulatory trouble and doesn’t happen come next year this time, T-Mobile USA could find itself in greater need of a wholesale LTE partner than it is now. If only there were some way to bridge the LTE/WiMAX gap with Clearwire, because the satellite angle married with Clearwire’s buildout plus the money LightSquared hasn’t spent yet would add up to something very interesting.
The wildcard for now though for LightSquared is the GPS interference concerns still making the rounds at the FCC. I can’t tell how real those concerns really are, anybody?
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A friend of mine sent me this text in an email with links and the pleading to raise the word. He is in a GIS group where the use of GPS information is integral to their work.
Friends,
Please see two very important articles (links attached below) regarding the FCC licensing issues for the L-band spectrum. I URGE YOU TO PLEASE write your Congressional Representatives and urge them TO STOP the FCC Final Order in favor LightSquared and prevent the repurposing of the adjacent L-Band frequencies! Or write directly to the FCC (fccinfo@fcc.gov). Reference FCC File No. SAT-MOD-20101118-00239 in the correspondence. Please do not put this off, this is a very important thing to get engaged and support our industry…
Please help us keep our fully functioning GPS frequencies and capability!
http://nlpc.org/stories/2011/03/01/will-fccs-political-favor-harbinger-hedge-fund-result-gps-interference
http://www.esri.com/news/arcnews/spring11articles/gps-is-being-threatened.html
Some more links from the perspective of GPS users
I thought I would send a few links in light of previous email about the serious potential issues regarding the interference of the GPS bandwidth.
http://www.gpsworld.com/survey/the-fccs-decision-lightsquared-high-precision-users-would-be-affected-most-11089
The above link provides alot of background information on the situation and just another example of our federal agencies catering to businesses without thinking it through.
If you read the article you will understand that it is not just the consumer based units that can be affected, but high-end precision users as well, i.e., surveying.
Another good read here and some information on how to act: http://www.gpsworld.com/gnss-system/act-now-protect-gps-signal-11113
I hope you all take the time to read abit about the situation at hand as GPS in general is such an invaluable tool in our industry, let alone in our daily lives.
And yet another missive from the world of GPS
The Coalition To Save Our GPS continues to grow in size and now includes ” all major aviation groups and GPS manufacturers along with marine and agriculture interests.”
http://www.saveourgps.org/voice-your-concern.aspx