Assessing LightSquared's Predicament

摘要

Things look dicey these days for LightSquared, which after investing hundreds of millions of dollars in a hybrid mobile broadband network has run into fierce and unrelenting opposition from GPS equipment makers and users worried about potential signal interference from the planned system. The startup has managed to get a satellite built and launched, but the far more daunting challenge — raising the billions of dollars necessary to deploy a network of some 40,000 ground-based signal repeaters across the United States — now looks immeasurably tougher. Of more immediate concern is winning operating approval from the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in the wake of recent findings by a technical working group that LightSquared indeed poses a severe GPS interference threat. Indeed, one must wonder at this point why the FCC not only licensed the system in the first place but also approved proposed modifications to LightSquared's operating plan that apparently exacerbated the issue.