

LightSquared: new national 4G network under construction, no telcos involved - necubi
http://arstechnica.com/telecom/news/2010/07/get-ready-for-lightsquared-broadband-verizon-and-att-not-fans.ars

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mdasen
So, there was an AP story about this that I think did a better job detailing
the challenges for LightSquared
([http://hosted2.ap.org/txdam/7d2a091809034418bf02b94fe7a8c4b9...](http://hosted2.ap.org/txdam/7d2a091809034418bf02b94fe7a8c4b9/Article_2010-07-20-US-
TEC-Wireless-Broadband/id-88dba65beffd4e908d1881cedbd6eb5a)).

Specifically, there are a couple of things I'd point out:

1\. They have to put at least 1 satellite into service. That's a huge cost for
something that you have no intention of making an important part of your
service.

2\. They're banking on the FCC changing rules surrounding their "satellite"
spectrum. Current rules say that it can be used to create a terrestrial
network to back up the satellite service, but every device they sell has to be
able to communicate with the satellite. That would make it prohibatively
expensive to provision customers with devices against companies who don't have
that restruction.

The $7B contract to build and maintain the network also seems a bit light.
Carriers like Verizon and AT&T spend around $7B annually to improve and
maintain their networks and they aren't starting from scratch. $7B over 8
years comes out to under $900M per year.

Granted, 4G should be cheaper to deploy since the equipment takes up less
space and there's no need for a lot of expensive and large things to support
legacy phone stuff. Still, Clearwire (who is rolling out 4G WiMAX) had capital
expenditure of $690M in the first quarter of this year alone. Although that
probably includes more than just network expenditure, Clearwire has yet to
cover most people.

If they're able to pull it off, it'll be great! If a company can reduce the
cost of rolling out a network, it usually means lower prices for consumers
(assuming adequate competition). So, hopefully we'll see a great nationwide
LTE network from LightSquared in a few years!

~~~
signa11
> They have to put at least 1 satellite into service. That's a huge cost for
> something that you have no intention of making an important part of your
> service.

apparently the cost of putting a satellite is only 8k ;)

~~~
zitterbewegung
I see your joke but a communications satellite is a much larger cost than the
8k satellite. We are talking millions of dollars for one simple satellite.

~~~
lsb
Are we, really? If you can put a satellite into space for 8k, why not put a
thousand satellites into space, accept that some of them will fail, and have
that much more of a network for the money?

~~~
bombs
The $8,000 satellites are put into low-earth orbit (160–1,200 km), where as
these would require a geosynchronous orbit (35,786 km). The increased mass and
orbit requires a lot more lift, i.e. fuel, i.e. money.

~~~
someone_here
But if you had a swarm of them...

~~~
chc
If you had a swarm of them, they would still not be viable telecom satellites.

~~~
someone_here
Why not?

~~~
chc
Well, because they'll die in a matter of weeks, for one. Sending up a swarm of
them just makes the loss costlier and thus strengthens the case for sending up
a proper satellite.

~~~
zitterbewegung
Not only that a swarm would function like space junk. Imagine NORAD trying to
track 100 satellites eventually one will probably hit something important.

------
ssp
An interesting prospect is that random startups could become cell carriers by
buying bandwidth from this company.

See also this: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1233712>

------
Geee
This was biggest single deal of Nokia Siemens ever. This made me thinking if
Nokia plans to bring carrier-free phones on the network. That's what I'd do.

And.. LTE (or LTE-A) is all-ip anyway, so who needs carriers?

~~~
signa11
> And.. LTE (or LTE-A) is all-ip anyway, so who needs carriers?

you do realize that, cell-phones or any other access side equipment that you
use, passes all data via the epc-core which is provided by the operator right
?

~~~
Geee
Yes, but as they said in the article, anybody can set up a virtual operator on
the network, be that Nokia or anybody else. My point is that this would make
it easy for Nokia to deploy on the US markets which has traditionally been the
playground of the operators; i.e. them deciding which devices to support.
(They want to be on top of the value chain)

Anyway, LTE provides ground for any VoIP solution which means that traditional
carriers might have hard time providing added value with their voice and SMS
services compared to just providing data.

~~~
wmf
You're just not thinking evil enough. They could set data prices such that a
VoIP call costs as much as a voice call. Or they could use IMS to impose
billing on SMS and VoIP.

------
sliverstorm
How are they going to get much money? There are very few 4G devices in
existence, are they betting everything on 4G becoming big in the next few
years?

~~~
detst
> are they betting everything on 4G becoming big in the next few years?

I'm not sure that's much of a bet as it is inevitable. Sprint already has a
phone on the market, Verizon will have a large deployment later this year and
AT&T plans to deploy next year. That's just the US; I think there's already a
small deployment of LTE somewhere in Europe.

~~~
masklinn
> Sprint already has a phone on the market

Sprint and the Evo 4G are using WiMax though, not LTE, I believe.

And though there is no 4G standard yet (LTE is 3.9G, the candidate for 4G is
LTE-Advanced) WiMax definitely isn't it.

~~~
detst
Right, I didn't say the Evo is LTE. You might get an argument from Sprint
about WiMAX not being 4G (even if it won't be _the_ standard) but the point I
was making is that the move to 4G is already underway and deployments around
the world inevitable.

