Broadband News
News, views and analysis
4G USA wholesale network plans unveiled
21 Jul 2010 | 10.23 Europe/London
Orange’s former CEO, Sanjiv Ahuja, has unveiled plans to roll out a 4G network across the USA which will offer coverage to 92% of the population by 2015.
The service will not be made available direct to consumers but will instead be offered to telecommunications providers (Verizon and AT&T will be using the same technology standard) as well as brands who wish to market their own white label mobile data services.
The LightSquared service will only offer data and is due to launch its first services in Las Vegas, Baltimore, Phoenix and Denver in the latter half of next year.
Money and regulations
The obvious two major hurdles the company will need to, at least, start overcoming in the next year are funding and FCC rules.
The cell towers to cover the country would be rolled out and maintained by Nokia Siemens in a $7bn eight year contract which LightSquared claims it will raise as and when necessary. For its part, Nokia Siemens announced last week that it was buying Motorola’s network infrastructure business for $1.2bn which would give it an instant footprint across the USA.
Perhaps more pressingly, Harbinger Capital Partners, the private equity company behind LightSquared, will need to get permission from the FCC to use its radio spectrum for land-based data services. The company acquired spectrum through buying satellite phone network, Sky Terra, earlier this year. It, like most satellite services, had the back up of a cellular connection so calls could be made at lower cost wherever possible.
It is this spectrum the LightSquared service will hope to use but without the current need to add satellite call-making equipment within its handsets or dongles, which would make them large and expensive.
For this change in rules the FCC will need to oblige. Harbinger believes this will not be a problem because it will increase competition in the mobile data market.
The service will not be made available direct to consumers but will instead be offered to telecommunications providers (Verizon and AT&T will be using the same technology standard) as well as brands who wish to market their own white label mobile data services.
The LightSquared service will only offer data and is due to launch its first services in Las Vegas, Baltimore, Phoenix and Denver in the latter half of next year.
Money and regulations
The obvious two major hurdles the company will need to, at least, start overcoming in the next year are funding and FCC rules.
The cell towers to cover the country would be rolled out and maintained by Nokia Siemens in a $7bn eight year contract which LightSquared claims it will raise as and when necessary. For its part, Nokia Siemens announced last week that it was buying Motorola’s network infrastructure business for $1.2bn which would give it an instant footprint across the USA.
Perhaps more pressingly, Harbinger Capital Partners, the private equity company behind LightSquared, will need to get permission from the FCC to use its radio spectrum for land-based data services. The company acquired spectrum through buying satellite phone network, Sky Terra, earlier this year. It, like most satellite services, had the back up of a cellular connection so calls could be made at lower cost wherever possible.
It is this spectrum the LightSquared service will hope to use but without the current need to add satellite call-making equipment within its handsets or dongles, which would make them large and expensive.
For this change in rules the FCC will need to oblige. Harbinger believes this will not be a problem because it will increase competition in the mobile data market.