06.15.11
Posted in Financials, LightSquared, Operators, Regulatory, Spectrum, TerreStar at 11:28 am by timfarrar
Its now being reported that LightSquared plans to ask the FCC for an extension of today’s deadline for submitting its report on GPS interference until July 1, as the company is apparently claiming that “all the information required for the report had not yet been submitted”.
However, the supposed new target date of July 1 conveniently just happens to be the day after the rescheduled June 30 auction for TerreStar Networks. It seems a huge stretch to imagine that this is purely a coincidence, when DISH blocked Harbinger’s attempts to secure access to the TerreStar spectrum last night, which I understand was the cornerstone of Harbinger’s planned “2GHz first” strategy, that first emerged back in March. Its also pretty hard to explain why it would take another two weeks simply to compile the report, given that the tests were apparently completed a couple of weeks ago.
UPDATE: One reason unrelated to TerreStar is that it could be fairly convenient for LightSquared to bury the report on the Friday of a holiday weekend.
Now the question is whether the GPS industry (who want LightSquared to move to different spectrum although perhaps did not expect that to actually happen) and the FCC will play ball and allow the deadline to be postponed. If that happens then Harbinger will have two weeks to either put together a superior bid (presumably with MetroPCS) for TerreStar, or to strike a network sharing deal with Sprint (if today’s first lien debt amendment proves sufficient to persuade Sprint that they have adequate security). Depending on which path proves successful (if indeed either one does), LightSquared will then know if it can propose using 2GHz spectrum initially, or if it will need to try and defend its L-band spectrum rights to the death.
UPDATE: LightSquared has filed the request for an extension until July 1, which has been granted almost immediately by the FCC. I am told that other members of the Working Group (with the exception of Sprint) opposed LightSquared’s request for an extension, and a filing to this effect has now appeared in the IB docket. Today the National Public Safety Telecommunications Council (NPSTC) also filed comments detailing their portion of the test results, noting that some public safety applications would see “vast service outages” and suggesting use of the 2GHz MSS spectrum for downlinks paired with L-band uplinks as one (albeit somewhat impractical) alternative to prevent interference.
Permalink
Posted in Financials, LightSquared, Operators, Regulatory, Spectrum at 10:24 am by timfarrar
Hot on the heels of Harbinger’s apparent failure to secure rights to use TerreStar’s 2GHz spectrum, which could have provided an alternative route forward while its L-band GPS interference issues are resolved, comes news that LightSquared’s first lien lenders have agreed to a modification which would give Sprint the right to pay them off and take control of LightSquared’s L-band spectrum in the event of a default. This agreement is slightly different to what I had understood that Sprint was looking for back in April, and gives Sprint far less security than pre-emption of the first lien rights would have offered.
In particular, in the event of default, Sprint would apparently have to pay off the $1.5B of first lien debt and would also presumably need to keep the Spectrum Cooperation Agreement with Inmarsat in place, which involves payments of $115M per year (increasing at an annual rate of 3%) plus additional rebanding payments over the next year. Thus the effective cost to Sprint of acquiring LightSquared’s spectrum assets would be in the region of $3.5B-$4B (the NPV of the Inmarsat payments is $2B+).
That might not be too unreasonable if LightSquared had access to 40MHz of LTE-capable spectrum in the L-band (though it is somewhat higher than the current combined price of $2.86B being offered by DISH for DBSD and TerreStar), but if the FCC declines to grant LightSquared the ability to use the upper part of the L-band spectrum, in the face of the major GPS interference problems apparently found in that part of the band, it looks utterly unrealistic for what would then only be about 20MHz of LTE-capable spectrum at best.
Its also worth noting that if LightSquared decided to terminate the lease agreement with Inmarsat, after the first five years of lease payments are made, then under current arrangements it would only have access to the Phase 1 spectrum (i.e. 2x5MHz in the lower L-band and 2x5MHz in the upper L-band). If LightSquared terminated the agreement with Inmarsat without making five years of lease payments, then the default spectrum allocation would go back to even less usable spectrum, probably resembling something like the Phase 0 allocation (i.e. only 2x5MHz in the upper L-band). As a result, there is certainly no benefit to LightSquared (or Sprint) in trying to get out of the Inmarsat agreement and expecting that there will still be 20MHz of LTE-capable spectrum that doesn’t interfere with GPS.
Thus, while the amendment to LightSquared’s first lien debt agreement points the way to a potential deal with Sprint, the GPS issues might still prevent the network sharing agreement being consummated. Of course, even if the Sprint deal does go through, this agreement also increases the likelihood that Harbinger’s equity investments in LightSquared will ultimately be worthless, because if LightSquared is unable to raise additional equity funding to pay its obligations to Sprint under the network sharing agreement, Sprint would then have a (presumably substantial) claim on the LightSquared assets before LightSquared’s equity holders saw any proceeds.
Permalink
06.14.11
Posted in Financials, ICO/DBSD, LightSquared, Operators, Regulatory, Spectrum, TerreStar at 3:32 pm by timfarrar
News emerged on Tuesday afternoon that TerreStar Networks (TSN) was close to agreeing a $1.2B to $1.4B stalking horse bid with DISH Networks. It appeared that DISH is likely to outbid a group of first lien debtholders and another bid from MetroPCS (possibly in conjunction with Harbinger), who jointly bid for DBSD with Solus and Harbinger back in March and were also outbid by DISH in that auction.
UPDATE: It has been confirmed to us that Harbinger was one of the parties attempting to acquire TerreStar’s spectrum assets, but its not clear whether Harbinger was aligned with MetroPCS or the other first lien holders (and it may even have been a potential customer/partner for both groups).
It seems that Harbinger had hoped to be in a position to announce a 2GHz first strategy, just as it planned back in March, in an attempt to head off the findings of tomorrow’s GPS Working Group report to the FCC which will state that testing demonstrated “widespread interference with GPS.” However, once again Harbinger may now have been thwarted by DISH.
UPDATE: Details on the agreed $1.375B stalking horse bid have now been filed with the Court. It is stated that the bid amount will exceed the secured debt (15% Notes plus PMCF plus DIP) by $90M. Thus the Exchangeable Notes (nearly $200M) and other unsecured creditors will have to make do with well under 50 cents on the dollar and no value would flow down to the equity holders in TSN (which is owned 88% by TerreStar Corporation and 12% by LightSquared). For these unsecured creditors to be paid in full and excess value to flow to the TSN equity would therefore require the winning bid in the auction to be increased to something between $1.5B and $1.6B (rather higher than I had previously estimated). Of course the disappointed equity holders (in TSN and by extension in TSC) may have some company, because at the current $1.375B bid level, Harbinger will also take a bath on its majority holdings of Exchangeable Notes, which it was buying at up to 82 cents on the dollar back in November.
Whether further bids might emerge in the subsequent auction is still unknown. The other first lien debtholders may be content to be paid in full in cash for their claim, though there were indications last night that they were still actively competing against DISH as the price rose towards $1.4B. Perhaps MetroPCS (and Harbinger?) could also try to outbid DISH in the auction itself. Unfortunately, that didn’t work in the DBSD case, and it could well be the case that no further bids emerge at the auction, given the protections that the successful stalking horse bidder will have.
If Harbinger is unsuccessful in securing rights to TerreStar’s 2GHz spectrum, its unclear where Harbinger and LightSquared go from here, unless Sprint is prepared to take LightSquared’s side in the GPS interference debate. However, if Harbinger did in fact team up once again with MetroPCS, that would make it harder to believe that a deal with Sprint is anything like as imminent as LightSquared has been hinting.
Permalink
Posted in Financials, LightSquared, Operators, Regulatory, Spectrum, TerreStar at 9:35 am by timfarrar
In a recent Vanity Fair profile, Phil Falcone was summed up by a rival fund manager as “A roll-the-dice, put-everything-on-red kind of guy”. However, with the report on GPS interference coming up tomorrow, it also appears that the GPS industry is united in putting all their efforts into pushing the emergency stop button on LightSquared. Particularly significant is the decision of the PNT Advisory Board last week to file comments with the FCC:
The formal recommendation reads: “The PNT Advisory Board recommends the PNT Executive Committee (EXCOM) should file formal comments with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regarding the interference issues.
“1. Based upon information and test results provided to the PNT Advisory Board at the meeting of June 8-10, 2011, the provision of GPS services cannot be assured if the LightSquared proposal for satellite and terrestrial broadband provision using the MSS L-Band receives final approval.
“2. The only reasonable and viable option to continue ubiquitous availability of GPS and the provision of a new 4G wireless broadband capability would be for the FCC to assign an alternate frequency spectrum to LightSquared that has little or no probability of affecting the delivery or utilization of GPS/GNSS services.”
The recently passed House version of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) would block the FCC from authorizing LightSquared operations until GPS interference concerns have been resolved. Thus, if the GPS community continues to receive strong Congressional backing, it may become impossible for the FCC to authorize commercial operation of LightSquared’s planned terrestrial network, whatever LightSquared decides to recommend in its June 15 report (note that this report will undoubtedly not have any meaningful consensus recommendations about how to proceed). Of course it is implausible that the FCC would simply assign “alternate frequency spectrum” to LightSquared, and the other spectrum controlled by LightSquared (8MHz in the 1.4GHz band, leased from TerreStar Corporation, and 5MHz in the 1670-75MHz band) is unlikely to be usable for a large scale mobile LTE buildout.
As a result, LightSquared and the FCC both face a dilemma about how to move forward. Perhaps Harbinger could partner with the first lien debt holders (other than Echostar) (or even partner once again with MetroPCS and Solus) to make a run at TerreStar Networks, similar to its efforts in the DBSD bankruptcy auction back in March. Although providing LightSquared with a waiver of the ATC rules in the 2GHz band might be one option for the FCC, that would not solve LightSquared’s funding problem, and more likely would exacerbate it, because LightSquared would potentially then have to lease TerreStar’s 2GHz MSS spectrum from the consortium buying the assets out of bankruptcy. Granting TerreStar a waiver of the ATC gating criteria would also potentially disrupt the FCC’s current consultation process, which seeks to persuade DBSD and TerreStar to give up their spectrum for incentive auctions. Even more problematically, a decision to use TerreStar’s spectrum initially might give the Congress the excuse they are looking for to completely prohibit LightSquared from using the L-band for future terrestrial operations, as the GPS industry is requesting.
As I noted a few days ago, Harbinger therefore needs to announce something big to turn around perceptions of LightSquared. At this point, some sort of deal with Sprint (with Sprint expressing confidence that the interference issues are manageable) appears to be the best option with a chance of achieving that, with a potential partnership with MetroPCS and Solus to bid for TerreStar a rather less attractive backup choice.
Permalink
06.13.11
Posted in General, Regulatory, Spectrum at 10:31 am by timfarrar
If the paradigm shift for the telecom industry in the 1990s was the Death of Distance and in the 2000s was Cutting the Cord, then what might the new paradigm be for the next decade? I’d venture to suggest that one of the most important trends will be data offloading from mobile to fixed networks. As a result, you will need that fixed wire (or cable or fiber) into your home more in a decade’s time than you do today.
The simple reason for this is that the cost of data delivery on a fixed network (at around 2-5 cents per Gbyte) is nearly two orders of magnitude lower than on wireless networks. Similarly, monthly usage per subscriber, despite dramatic increases in wireless usage over the last few years, is also about 100 times greater on wireline networks (15Gbytes per month compared to a few hundred Mbytes on wireless). This ratio is unlikely to change significantly over the next decade, given expected improvements in both wireline and wireless technologies.
What that means is if you want to watch streaming video on your tablet or smartphone, you will be very strongly incentivized (by price) to offload that traffic to a WiFi hotspot and onto a wireline network. For example, at ~2Gbyte per hour for streaming HD video (at 4-5Mbps) to a tablet, you would have to pay $20 per hour at current wireless prices of $10/Gbyte. Even in 5 years time the price will undoubtedly be dollars per hour, not pennies per hour. Unsurprisingly, consumers are already taking these pricing signals onboard and turning to WiFi. However, the impact of this switch is dramatically underestimated in Cisco’s forecasts, which project that in the US only 30% of smartphone and tablet traffic will be offloaded in 2015. Even today, this ludicrously underestimates the amount of tablet offloading, given that the majority of iPads are WiFi-only.
Ironically, the spectrum that might therefore be in greatest demand in the future is unlicensed spectrum, for short range wireless access. That’s why there is considerable pressure from Microsoft and Google to ensure that white spaces are protected in any future broadcast spectrum auction, and why a study for Ofcom on future UK spectrum requirements predicted that there would be more near term demand for incremental unlicensed spectrum than licensed spectrum.
Permalink
06.10.11
Posted in Financials, LightSquared, Operators, Regulatory, Spectrum at 4:37 pm by timfarrar
As data continues to emerge on the results of the GPS interference testing, it now seems that LightSquared intends to propose that it should initially use the lower part of its L-band spectrum, but that GPS users should be required to fit filters so that after a multi-year sunset period, LightSquared would be able to use the full 40MHz of MSS-ATC spectrum in its terrestrial network. Indeed LightSquared appears to be insistent that “eventually the company intends to use all the spectrum allocated to it by [the] FCC”.
On the other hand, the GPS industry is asserting that “there is no viable technical fix” and the FCC “should focus its efforts on finding [alternative] spectrum that LightSquared can operate in”. The government-chartered NPEF task force has presented a range of potential mitigation options, of which it appears the most plausible is to “limit implementation to lower end of MSS L-band” (i.e. to just 20MHz of the 40MHz of MSS-ATC spectrum that LightSquared has access to under its agreement with Inmarsat).
It therefore seems possible that caught between these conflicting demands, the FCC could choose to split the baby, permitting LightSquared to operate in the lower part of the L-band, while putting off a decision about the upper part of the L-band until considerable further study is undertaken (very likely taking a year or more). However, this would make it much harder for Harbinger to fund the LightSquared buildout, because it already has a $2B+ obligation to Inmarsat for its spectrum lease (the NPV of $115M increasing at 3% p.a.) and clearance costs, plus $1.5B in first lien debt. Unless the lower 20MHz of spectrum was valued at an implausible $1 per MHzPOP, or LightSquared could renegotiate its deal with Inmarsat (which seems unlikely given that LightSquared has just had to pay Inmarsat another $40M to eliminate Inmarsat’s permitted 9 month excusable delay in making the Phase 1 spectrum available), it would be hard to invest at anything close to the $2.5B value that Harbinger puts on LightSquared’s equity. It would also be problematic for the GPS industry, because GPS-augmentation solutions such as John Deere’s Starfire (for precision agriculture) would still be severely affected by LightSquared’s lower band operations. Thus splitting the baby might actually be far from optimal, forcing large costs on at least some parts of the GPS industry, while not enabling the buildout of LightSquared’s network to proceed.
Next week all eyes will be on the June 15 report, in which LightSquared will set out its proposed mitigation strategy. I would expect it to include a proposal for initial operation in the lower part of the L-band without any further restrictions or delay (something which will presumably be resisted by the GPS industry, who will instead likely propose further study, given that LightSquared “failed to deliver test equipment that matches its proposed operations” for the Las Vegas tests), and then propose an aggressive timetable for resolution of issues in the upper band (where the GPS industry will ask that all terrestrial operations be completely ruled out).
UPDATE: OnStar has also now requested that the FCC require additional testing before reaching a final decision to allow LightSquared to commence ATC service.
However, the big question is whether LightSquared will accompany the release of the report with an announcement of a network sharing agreement with Sprint (arguing that it could use capacity from Sprint if necessary while it waits for upper L-band spectrum). This might sound like a plausible proposition, but of course LightSquared would not be able to pay for its buildout without substantial incremental funding. Realistically the best that LightSquared could hope for is an MoU which requires it to obtain more funding and resolve its FCC issues within the next few months (before Sprint starts its Network Vision buildout in Q4).
It is unclear whether Sprint is prepared to get caught in the Congressional crossfire between the GPS industry and LightSquared, at a time when it needs all the support it can get in its attempts to block the AT&T/T-Mobile merger, and that will probably determine whether a deal comes to fruition next week or not. However, given the pressure Harbinger and LightSquared are under at the moment, it is almost certainly essential that they announce a deal with Sprint next week to have any chance of changing perceptions that Harbinger is as doomed as Captain Ahab.
Permalink
06.04.11
Posted in Financials, LightSquared, Operators, Regulatory, Spectrum at 9:49 am by timfarrar
A first, very modest concession has now emerged from the FCC Chairman over the process for authorizing LightSquared’s commercial operations, in a letter dated May 31 to Senator Chuck Grassley. This letter is a response to the demand from Grassley on April 27 for records of communications between and within the FCC related to Harbinger and LightSquared. The May 31 letter completely ignores Grassley’s specific request and also fails to addresses the concerns he expressed about the very short comment period originally set for the November proceeding, which as the CTIA pointed out, was “unlike most satellite modification filings”. Unsurprisingly, Grassley is therefore still upset about the FCC’s “lack of transparency in this case”.
However, the letter does make one modest concession, in that it promises that the Commission “will establish a public comment cycle and give all parties further opportunities to present their views”. This was one commitment that was missing from the January 2011 waiver order, and was of considerable concern to the GPS community, although it does not go as far as the Save Our GPS Coalition requested, which was for a comment period of “at least 45 days” and for “further FCC actions [to] take place with the approval of a majority of the commissioners”.
The FCC Chairman is presumably very cognizant of the language in the House version of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which would forbid the FCC from authorizing LightSquared’s commercial operations until GPS interference concerns are resolved, and wants to prevent similar language from being included in the final bill. Whether his concession on a public comment period is sufficient to achieve that remains to be seen, especially given his conclusion that “I remain focused on ensuring that the Commission takes full advantage of the incredible economic opportunities that underutilized spectrum presents. This includes the opportunity presented by LightSquared…”
However, even if the FCC is successful in forestalling Congressional intervention, a public comment period (of say 30 days or longer if it includes time for reply comments) will certainly push back the timeline on which a final ruling from the FCC can be expected to at least the end of July, and more likely sometime in August. Unless and until the GPS interference issue is resolved, it hardly seems likely that Sprint will want to finalize a network sharing deal with LightSquared, or that LightSquared will be able to raise the money to pay for that buildout. Thus it appears that a LightSquared IPO in July is certainly off the table, and the supposed network sharing deal with Sprint seems to be no more imminent than it was in mid-March (when supposedly LightSquared was about to announce a deal with Sprint at CTIA) or in mid-April when these reports last emerged.
Permalink
05.31.11
Posted in Financials, ICO/DBSD, LightSquared, Operators, Regulatory, Spectrum, TerreStar at 11:08 pm by timfarrar
Although Charlie Ergen has his Seinfeld strategy for exploiting DISH’s new assets, including DBSD and Blockbuster, Harbinger’s plans for LightSquared are becoming ever harder to discern, with news today that LightSquared is “considering a deal with AT&T to buy network capacity from the carrier”. Presumably this story comes in response to concerns that LightSquared might be forbidden from operating its L-band terrestrial network indefinitely, if new language in the National Defense Authorization Act passed by the House of Representatives last week is ultimately included in the final bill. At the very least it now appears that the FAA will insist that LightSquared’s operations be confined to only the lower half of its 40MHz of L-band spectrum, while John Deere contends that “permitting LightSquared to operate its network as proposed or any variant of its currently proposed network will create massive interference into Deere’s StarFire system and other similar systems risking serious harm to the U.S. agriculture industry”.
This news marks yet another 180 degree turn in LightSquared’s ever-changing story, which over the last year has shifted from a $7B contract (or rather MoU) with Nokia Siemens Networks (which disintegrated in January) to a joint bid with MetroPCS for DBSD to a network sharing agreement with Sprint (which at one point was supposedly even going to supplant Clearwire) to now an “initiative” with AT&T, along the way apparently including talks with Cablevision, Time Warner Cable and any number of other companies. This extraordinary saga reads like something by Hans Christian Andersen, the only question being whether the final tale will turn out to be “The Ugly Duckling” or “The Emperor’s New Clothes“.
Meanwhile, the FCC appears to be doing its best to make the TerreStar bankruptcy auction even more confusing, releasing a Public Notice on May 20 which “invites technical input on approaches to encourage the growth of terrestrial mobile broadband services in the 2 GHz spectrum range”. Unfortunately for TerreStar, the FCC once again insists that “the public interest” requires that “any grant of terrestrial rights in the 2 GHz band [should] have ‘conditions designed to ensure timely utilization of the spectrum for broadband and appropriate consideration for the step-up in the value of the affected spectrum’” in the form of “Voluntary Incentive Auctions” or “Voluntary Return of MSS Spectrum Rights”, thereby potentially reducing the perceived value of TerreStar’s MSS spectrum in the upcoming auction quite significantly.
Of course, things are not looking that great for the FCC’s other attempts to bring additional spectrum into use for terrestrial mobile broadband (i.e. LightSquared and broadcast TV incentive auctions), so perhaps the buyer of TerreStar’s spectrum will simply tell the FCC to go pound sand, and continue to pursue a (loss making) satellite-based business plan until a better offer is on the table. However, in those circumstances, whoever buys TerreStar would need to have deep pockets, and be happy to wait for several years rather than seeking a quick flip of the spectrum. Given Harbinger’s experience with LightSquared, that might well put off some of the financial players who could otherwise have been interested in TerreStar’s spectrum.
Permalink
05.26.11
Posted in Financials, LightSquared, Operators, Regulatory, Spectrum at 12:24 pm by timfarrar
Over the last week, a clearer picture has begun to emerge of LightSquared and the GPS industry’s respective strategies, as interference tests continue in Las Vegas. Some data is now emerging from these tests, with a GPS World webinar this morning citing that in a rural test case (see presentation), high precision receivers were impacted up to 1800m from the base station (although the radius of interference would obviously be less for narrowband GPS receivers and for more urban environments with higher levels of clutter).
Given that the problem is mainly caused by transmissions in the upper channel (Phase 0 spectrum) closest to the GPS frequencies, LightSquared is already indicating that it will offer to operate only below 1545MHz, until the FCC introduces receiver standards and old GPS equipment is phased out (a process that will take many years to complete). As Jeff Carlisle of LightSquared commented in a May 23 Space News article: “If the most efficient and fair solution is not to do a receiver-side solution, we haven’t taken any of the possible transmission solutions off the table. We can look at ways of implementing our service, how we do it, when we do it, using what spectrum”. Indeed LightSquared has just paid Inmarsat another $40M to speed up the availability of the Phase 1A spectrum, and moved back its commercial deployment timeline into the first half of 2012 for precisely this reason.
However, as problems have emerged with the testing in Las Vegas, it appears that the GPS industry will demand that significant additional testing must be carried out, before LightSquared is given permission to launch commercial service even in the lower part of the band. As Alan Cameron of GPS World put it on this morning’s webinar, LightSquared does not have the full software [needed to operate its base stations in the way it plans to do commercially] so the current testing is premature. A letter sent to the FCC last week, signed by 33 senators, even asks the Commission to “rescind LightSquared’s waiver until this demonstration [of non-interference with GPS] is made”. Of course, as everyone should know, a demonstration of total “non-interference” is impossible.
Next week we should expect to see more data on the government’s testing of interference in New Mexico, based on the charter of the National Space-Based PNT Systems Engineering Forum, which was tasked to produce a final report “in a publicly releasable version” by May 31, 2011. Indications to date are that this testing certainly does not demonstrate “non-interference” with GPS (and the report itself will written by proponents of GPS not LightSquared), so this is likely to intensify the political firestorm aimed at LightSquared and the FCC.
UPDATE: The FAA report is also scheduled to be released on June 3 and, according to a report in FlightGlobal, the conclusions also appear to be problematic for LightSquared, notably a statement that “From an aviation perspective, operations at Phase 0, 1 and 2 spectral deployments, the upper channel [frequencies above 1536MHz] should not be permitted”.
FURTHER UPDATE: The FlightGlobal article has now been taken down, but is still available here and a more complete report on the study is available here. Also the House of Representatives has now passed the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), with strengthened language apparently requiring that the FCC should not provide “final authorization for LightSquared operations until Defense Department concerns about GPS interference have been resolved”. If that bill passes the Senate and is signed by the President, then it would seem likely to stop any prospect of near term commercial operations by LightSquared.
Of course, a requirement for more testing and a further delay to LightSquared obtaining permission to commence service (at best) or a withdrawal of the waiver (at worst) could very easily derail the LightSquared venture completely. I’m told that LightSquared had been hoping to raise money from private equity sources and then undertake an IPO in July, after signing a provisional network sharing agreement with Sprint. This new funding is a pre-requisite for Sprint to move forward with any buildout under the network sharing agreement, because of the upfront costs that it would incur, and so Sprint needs to be convinced that LightSquared will be able to reimburse these costs, either with cash or spectrum rights.
With Sprint expected to announce its plans for Network Vision this summer, LightSquared therefore needs to achieve some certainty about its spectrum position very soon, or risk missing that boat. Ominously, at a New America Foundation event in Washington DC two weeks ago featuring LightSquared’s CEO, Sprint noted that it would be able to host other spectrum on its Network Vision platform, including “possibly Clearwire, possibly public safety”, but conspicuously failed to include LightSquared on that list.
Permalink
05.18.11
Posted in LightSquared, Operators, Regulatory, Spectrum at 7:10 pm by timfarrar
Today, it was reported that LightSquared has revised its deployment plans, and now expects “field trials in the third and fourth quarter this year in Baltimore, Las Vegas and Phoenix” followed by “a ‘full-blown commercial’ launch…scheduled for early next year” rather than “by the end of this year” as was indicated in April. Even that was slower than in January, when LightSquared suggested that it was “testing LTE in Baltimore, Denver, Las Vegas and Phoenix now” and was “expected to launch up to nine Midwest markets this year”.
Back in January, LightSquared was granted a waiver by the FCC, based on commitments that the company was “confident that this [GPS interference] issue can be resolved without delaying deployment of wireless broadband, generally, or the LightSquared network specifically” and that “LightSquared was cognizant of this issue when we made the buildout commitments that served as the basis for the Commission’s own requirements in its March 2010 Order”. Indeed LightSquared also indicated that it would not “continue to roll out our network and meet the rigorous construction timetable that the Commission has made a condition of our authorization” unless the FCC takes “quick, favorable action” to approve its updated business plan.
However, despite the FCC acceding to LightSquared’s waiver request, based on these assurances, it now seems that LightSquared will delay the rollout of its network and blame the GPS interference issue, saying that “the company is watching the FCC before fully rolling out its ground-based network”. It would be understandable if in these circumstances the FCC was becoming somewhat impatient with LightSquared’s progress, and LightSquared’s CEO has recently been doing the rounds of FCC Commissioners, presumably with a view to shoring up LightSquared’s support at the FCC.
UPDATE: LightSquared has told DSLReports that “they’ve always planned their first commercial launch to be in early 2012″. Of course that’s not what LightSquared told the FCC in March 2010, who quoted as part of their public interest rationale for approving the Harbinger takeover that “Service will begin in two trial markets with a commercial launch commencing before the third quarter of 2011, providing service for up to 9 million POPs”.
Looking at LightSquared’s latest statements in more detail, it also appears that Denver has been dropped from the original deployment plan (indeed back in March 2010 LightSquared told the FCC that “service will begin in two trial markets, Denver and Phoenix, with a commercial launch before the third quarter of 2011 providing service to up to 9 million POPs”). It isn’t terribly surprising that the initial rollout will now take place in Las Vegas, because that is basically the easiest major city in the entire US to cover with a wireless network, due to the lack of foliage and the flat terrain. Indeed, ICO (now DBSD) was able to cover the city very well (albeit without the intention to provide indoor coverage) with only 3 base stations, during trials of its MIM service in 2008, as shown in the diagram below.
In Phoenix, I’m told that LightSquared’s site acqusition partner shut down its operations back in January, and at that point the tower companies were no longer being paid rent for the 20 site leases that had been signed. In Baltimore I understand that only a very limited proof of concept deployment was planned (with a handful of base stations at most), to determine the extent of interference with Inmarsat’s maritime safety services. Given this information, unless something significant has changed in the last few months, it seems that at best only a minimal deployment effort is taking place ahead of the potential network sharing agreement with Sprint, and associated contract with Ericsson, that everyone expects to emerge soon (and which today’s Clearwire agreement with Ericsson presumably provides a template for).
Permalink
« Previous Page — « Previous entries « Previous Page · Next Page » Next entries » — Next Page »
