Lot of smal news on the LightSquared front:
Today Sprint has desolved its partnership with the company. Sprint is returning $65 million in prepayments to LightSquared.
- Forbes
- LS press release ("It's best")
GOP Rep. Alan Nunnelee (Miss.) urged the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to not block wireless startup LightSquared's planned 4G network in a filing with the agency [in a Feb 28 letter to the FCC].
- The Hill Blog
In a filing with the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) International Bureau, the American Soybean Association (ASA) and other organizations representing farmers and agribusinesses in all 50 states declared that “high-precision GPS technology is vitally important to American agriculture, and would be gravely harmed by LightSquared’s plans.”
- Delta Farm Press (The folks at the Save Our GPS Coalition distributed the ASA press release.)
LightSquared hired Ted Olsen, Bush's lawyer in Bush v. Gore, for its legal counsel going forward.
- Telcoms
Today (Friday Mar 16) is the last day for comments on the FCC's planned decision to deny LightSquared a license to proceed.
by Adena Schutzberg on 03/16 at 05:33 AM |
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“The companies have agreed to realigning our deployment timeline to coincide with potential FCC actions,” Scott Sloat, a spokesman for Overland Park, Kansas-based Sprint, said in an e-mail. Until approval is received, “both companies believe it is prudent to pull back on expenses,” he said.
Sprint has been working on buliding the network infrastructure in exchange for payments from LightSquared. Now that deal will cease until approval or perhaps non-approval.
- BusinessWeek
by Adena Schutzberg on 01/06 at 03:00 AM |
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Today LightSquared named Marc Montagner as its new chief financial officer after the previous one left the company Montagner brings some key experiese and experience: He worked on regulatory and technical issues for LightSquared’s predecessor company, SkyTerra and was in charge of acquisitions for Sprint, including the Nextel merger.
Sprint's deal with LightSquared is based on FCC approval of the wireless tech by the end of 2011. Of course, that didn't happen so Sprint generously gave LightSquared another month. But if that falls through, Sprint could walk away.
by Adena Schutzberg on 01/04 at 05:13 AM |
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Reps. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Joe Barton (R-Texas) sent letter to AT&T, Sprint, Verizon, and T-Mobile to ask "what personally identifiable information is stored, how long it is kept, and for what other purposes it's used." Responses are expected no later than April 19 and were prompted by an article in Germany's Zeit Online highlighting a cell carrier stored thousands of data points for one individual over six month. We highlighted that story in our "Worth a Click" feature; it highlights articles of interest in other online publications.
One bill is on top in Congress to mandate reasonable cause before enforcement officials can access such data. (APB coverage)
- ZDnet Asia
by Adena Schutzberg on 04/04 at 04:07 AM |
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GigaOm reports that LightSquared has a lot more issues besides straightening out the GPS interference sitation. Among them:
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It doesn’t have devices, unless we count the poorly reviewed Genus phone offered by AT&T and TerreStar.
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It does have to have dual-mode chips available for its customers, but if it changes spectrum to avoid GPS interference, that will require a radio chip tweak that could cause delays in devices getting to market.
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It has until the third quarter (or end of year) in which to cover 9 million people and until 2012 to cover 100 million.
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It no longer appears to be working with Nokia Siemens Networks, although it is still active in building out networks in Denver, Baltimore/Washington D.C. and Las Vegas.
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Its best hope for a network build-out partner, T-Mobile, is set to be acquired by AT&T.
- GigaOm
by Adena Schutzberg on 04/04 at 03:00 AM |
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