An Evolution in US Mobile Broadband Industry - Lightsquared -> Ligado

Update on 23rd-April-2017 :-


Good to see that the Lightsquared is coming out of bankruptacy and emerging with new focus.
They have renamed as Ligado and expected to be operational soon...

For more details http://ligado.com/

http://www.fiercewireless.com/wireless/lightsquared-rebrands-as-ligado-networks-but-spectrum-plans-remain-cloudy

An Update on 30th-Oct-2012 :-

LightSquared booked Chapter-11 Bankruptacy

Sprint broke the deal it has signed with LightSquared for network sharing..

And so many other issues... Looks like LightSquared ran in to issues with GPS operators due to neighboring frequency band and also some other arguments [ Ref : LightSquared News Site]

Real Issue : LightSquared was intended to use its L-Band which is neighboring the GPS band.Since the GPS systems don't have the ability to ignore nearby LTE band frequency.There is no clarity of who is at fault.

Initial Post by 17th June-2012 :-

While reading Deepak Gurang's Blog, 

Ref  : http://4gmobile-renold.blogspot.in/2011/01/lightsquared-gets-green-light-to-build.html

I came across an article about LightSquared A US Company who recently got approvals to deploy LTE Network using terrestrial & Satellite Networks.

Ref : http://www.lightsquared.com/what-we-do/

The concept of using Satellite for telecom services always  points toward the "Latency" issue.

Reference : http://www.satellitetoday.com/via/features/Minimizing-Latency-in-Satellite-Networks_31811.html

Currently there are only few such satellite networks survives with good customer base. Ex : Thuraya/Inmarsat. Thuraya has more voice traffic while Inmarsat has more data traffic. [ Not sure about the current Status @ 2012]

The latency observed in satellite networks with satellites positioned at GEO Orbit is ~ 280 ms.

Ref : http://www.satsig.net/latency.htm

So with this roadblock, LightSquared may not be able to offer a superior quality VoIP service, but a network may serve well for the demanding WEB & Video Streaming services.


Additionally they are about to run a terrestrial LTE Network also. 

The questions which popped up are....

• How they will be able to direct the subscriber traffic demand accordingly to serve various services ?
• How they are going to design the end user terminals which has to work both in terrestrial and Satellite network ?

Also they are revolutionizing the operating model by doing only wholesale business. It is good for the country to make the broadband market boom.

This model opens up a great deal in US consumer market and helps variety of companies to leverage the opportunity to reach potential customers of their product in a better way rather than usual Newspaper/TV ad models which is is in decline as of now due to the growing communication device oriented lifestyle.

The day is not far the a couple of  countries can and join together to build a network which can be sold on wholesale models to their respective operators/MVNO operators.

The ownership of telecom business slowly drifting away from traditional operating models.